Rodin’s Gates of Hell at Stanford
While visiting the Bay Area, someone suggested I get to Stanford, and in particular the Rodin sculpture garden, as a potential place to paint or just to visit for its own sake. Little did I know what a truly marvelous collection and garden I would encounter there.
The Gates of Hell, Stanford
Oil on Linen Panel
10 x 12″
Available
This is the entrance to the garden and museum, a stunning and very powerful sight, is delicately hidden behind a clump of cypresses and set just off the road. I was not expecting to find such a collection, I had imagined 2 or 3 sculptures in a somewhat forgotten garden. This was anything but.
There is a complete museum to Rodin, as the founder Leland J Stanford was a prominent collector of the artist and the museum houses 199 of his works. There are 6 copies of The Gates of Hell around the world, 1 other being in the U.S. and the others in Europe and South Korea.
Having lived in Florence for years, my first impression is a more wild and 3-dimensional version of Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise found on the Baptestry in Piazza del Duomo in Florence. Indeed, these gates are inspired completely by Dante’s first part to The Inferno and one feels their power from a distance.
While it only took Ghiberti 21 years to complete his doors, it took Rodin 37, still incomplete upon his death. The doors were originally commissioned to be the entrance to the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris, but instead became the doors to Rodin’s own museum.
The doors contain multiple smaller figures that became individual larger works such as The Thinker (top center of the doors), Ugolino and His Children, Meditation, Eternal Springtime and the list goes on.
This was a huge project, the doors measuring 6 meters (18 feet) in height- in bronze this is an astonishing feat and a powerful overbearing presence.
If you ever have the chance to visit Rodin’s Gates of Hell or The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, don’t pass up the opportunity.