Auguste Rodin was a French sculptor who was also one of the most influential European artists of the late nineteenth century. He was born in 1840 and died in 1917. He was contemporary with CTzanne, Gauguin, and van Gogh, but he was the first sculptor in a long time to occupy a central position in public attention as he opened up new possibilities for his art much as the Impressionists and post-Impressionists were doing for painting. Rodin came from a poor background and was rejected by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts three times. For many years, he worked as an ornamental mason. He went to Italy in 1875, and it was there he was exposed to the works of Michelangelo, who would serve as his inspiration for his first major work, The Age of Bronze, exhibited in 1878. This work caused controversy because of its naturalistic treatment of the naked figure, an approach quite different from the idealizing convention then common. Rodin was in fact accused of having cast the work from a live model. by 1880, Rodin's reputation was established, and he was then commissioned by the state to make a bronze door for a proposed MusTe des Arts DTcoratifs. Rodin never finished this huge work, known as The Gates of Hell, though he worked on it on and off until 1900. The proposed museum never materialized. The work consists of some 200 figures which would form the basis for famous independent sculptures, such as the well-known The Thinker (Chilvers, Osborne, and Farr 428).
The influence of Michelangelo is apparent in the works of Rodin, particularly the early works. Michelangelo made the body the center of his art in both his paintings and his sculpture. For Michelangelo, it is the body which expresses emotions. Rodin was also fascinated with Michelangelo because he found in the latter's art a strange and tantalizing mixture of male and female, for Michelangelo was fascinated with the hermaphrodite as a mysterious and compelling creature. Rodin sh...