The Gates of Hell 1880-c.1900, Musée Rodin cast no. 5 of 12 in 1977 Bronze 250 ¾  x  158 x 33 3/8 in. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, gift of B. Gerald Cantor Collection In 1880 the French Ministry of Fine Arts commissioned Rodin to design his first large-scale public project. The Gates of Hell was intended to be an entrance portal for a museum of decorative arts to be built in Paris. Rodin's main source of inspiration for The Gates was The Divine Comedy by twelfth-century epic poet Dante Aligheri. The Inferno, one of the three parts of The Divine Comedy, was a common reference in French art and literature during this time. An avid reader of Dante, Rodin borrowed imagery directly from The Inferno in addition to creating his own unique visual representations. Rodin wanted to emulate Dante's journey through the underworld as a three-dimensional single piece that would incorporate many characters and scenes. He also drew inspiration from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), a controversial book of verse from 1857. Although the museum was never built, Rodin continued to work on The Gates for most of his life. Many of his most famous independent sculptures were derived from smaller reliefs contained within this overwhelming composition.