2-745-782 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Thinker, 1880-1881. The Thinker was first developed as part of Rodin's The Gates of Hell , a sculptured doorway for a proposed museum of decorative arts in Paris. Intended to be part of a relief directly above the doors, the rugged figure was originally conceived as a generalized image of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who wrote the Divine Comedy .