Description
The Thinker (Le Penseur) is a bronze sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It represents the creative mind at work. The sculpture is often associated with philosophy because of the figure's posture, which appears lost in deep thought. Rodin created this famous creation in 1881. That year, Rodin received his first official Parisian commission: a monumental bronze gate for a future Museum of Decorative Arts. This Porte de l'Enfer (Gate of Hell) was conceived after Dante's Divine Comedy. The bronze statue was intended for the central pediment, while its accentuated musculature and concentrated expression evoked Michelangelo's tomb figures in the Florentine Basilica of St. Lawrence. The sculpture is also called Le Poète, as it was originally intended to depict Dante meditating. The Thinker was Rodin's first work to be exhibited in a public place. On April 21, 1906, it was erected in front of the Pantheon during a severe political and social crisis, making it a socialist symbol. In 1922, the statue and its pedestal were moved to the garden of the Hôtel Biron, now the Rodin Museum. Another copy is in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. Other copies stand near Rodin's tomb in Meudon and in front of the main entrance to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
