The Thinker (French: Le Penseur)

The sculpture The Thinker (French: Le Penseur) is one of the major works of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and was created between 1880 and 1882.

The original is in the possession of the Musée Rodin in Paris, a copy stands at the artist's grave in Meudon.

The sculpture has a height of 72 cm, is made of bronze and has been finely patinated and polished.

The work was enlarged to a height of 181 cm in 1902. The monumental version became the artist's first work in public space. The model for this sculpture, as for other works by Rodin, was the muscular French prizefighter and wrestler Jean Baud, who usually appeared in the red-light milieu.

The sculpture is supposed to represent Dante Alighieri, the brilliant creator of the Divine Comedy. Rodin's long preoccupation with his work and thus also with the boundaries between heaven and hell had led the sculptor into a serious existential crisis. The Gates of Hell, a portal developed from Dante's Inferno for the Musée des Arts décoratifs - a state commission that was abandoned in 1880 - occupied him until the end of his life. He created 186 figures for it, some of which were also free-standing. One of these is The Thinker, who, in strong tension, muscular and internalised, ponders on the doings and fate of mankind.

This and many other works by Rodin were groundbreaking for modernism and heralded a new age of three-dimensional artistic creation.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker