Auguste rodin the thinker renaissance

Sculpture by Auguste Rodin

For other uses, see The Thinker (disambiguation).

The Thinker (French: Le Penseur), by Auguste Rodin, is a bronze sculpture depicting a nude male figure of heroic size, seated on a large rock, leaning forward, right elbow placed upon the left thigh, back of the right hand supporting the chin in a posture evocative of deep thought and contemplation.

This universally recognized expression of “deep thought” has made the sculpture one of the most widely known artworks in the world. It has become the iconic symbol of thinking; images of the sculpture in profile are often used to demonstrate philosophy and other practices of contemplation or introspection.

What’s So Special About The Thinker by Auguste Rodin?: The Thinker (French: Le Penseur), by Auguste Rodin, is a bronze sculpture depicting a nude male figure of heroic size, seated on a large rock, leaning forward, right elbow placed upon the left thigh, back of the right hand supporting the chin in a posture evocative of grave thought and contemplation. This universally recognized expression of.

Rodin conceived the figure as part of his work The Gates of Hell commissioned in , but the first of the familiar monumental bronze castings was made in , and is now exhibited at the Musée Rodin, in Paris.

There are 27 other known full-sized bronze castings of the figure, approximately centimetres (73&#;in) tall, though not all were made under Rodin's supervision.

Various other versions, several in plaster, as well as studies and posthumous castings, exist in a range of sizes.

Origin

The Thinker was initially named The Poet (French: Le Poète), and was part of a big commission begun in for a doorway surround called The Gates of Hell.

Rodin based this on the early 14th century poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and most of the figures in the function represented the main characters in the poem with The Thinker at the center of the composition over the doorway and somewhat larger than most of the other figures.

Some critics believe that it was originally intended to depict Dante at the gates of Hell, pondering his great poem.

Other critics reject that theory, pointing out that the figure is naked while Dante is fully clothed throughout his poem, and that the sculpture's physique does not correspond to Dante's effete figure.^[1] The sculpture is nude, as Rodin wanted a heroic figure in the tradition of Michelangelo, to represent intellect as adv as poetry.^[2] Other critics came to see the sculpture as a self-portrait.^[1][3] This detail from the Gates of Hell was first named The Thinker by foundry workers, who noted its similarity to Michelangelo's statue of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, called Il Pensieroso (The Thinker).^[1]

The model for this sculpture, as for other works by Rodin, was the muscular French prizefighter and wrestler Jean Baud, who mostly appeared in the red-light district.

Jean Baud was also featured on the Swiss 50 franc note by Hodler.

The original is in the Musée Rodin in Paris. The sculpture has a height of 72&#;cm, was made of bronze and had been finely patinated and polished. The work depicts a nude male figure of heroic size who is tense, muscular and internalized, contemplating the actions and fate of the people while sitting on a rock.

He is seen leaning over, his right elbow placed on his left thigh, holding the weight of his chin on the back of his right hand. The pose is one of deep thought and contemplation, and the statue is often used as an image to represent philosophy. This and many other works by Rodin were groundbreaking for modernism and heralded a new age of three-dimensional artistic creation.

The function was enlarged in to a height of &#;cm. The monumental version became the artist's first work in public space. The figure was designed to be seen from below and is normally displayed on a fairly high plinth, although the heights vary considerably chosen by the various owners.

Casts

Main article: List of The Thinker sculptures

The Thinker has been cast in multiple versions and is found around the world, but the history of the progression from models to castings is still not entirely clear.

The Thinker French : Le Penseurby Auguste Rodinis a bronze sculpture depicting a nude male figure of heroic sizeseated on a large rock, leaning forward, right elbow placed upon the left thigh, endorse of the right hand supporting the chin in a posture evocative of deep thought and contemplation. It has become the iconic symbol of thinking ; images of the sculpture in profile are often used to indicate philosophy and other practices of contemplation or introspection. There are 27 other known full-sized bronze castings of the figure, approximately centimetres 73 in high, though not all were made under Rodin's supervision. Various other versions, several in plaster, as well as studies and posthumous castings, exist in a range of sizes.

About 28 monumental-sized bronze casts are in museums and public places. In addition, there are sculptures of diverse study-sized scales and plaster versions (often painted bronze) in both monumental and study sizes. Some newer castings have been produced posthumously and are not considered part of the original film.

Rodin made the first tiny plaster version around The first bronze version was executed in and is held at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. The first full-scale model was presented at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in Paris in A public subscription financed a bronze casting, which became the property of the Town of Paris, and was place in front of the Panthéon.^[4] In , the original bronze was moved to the Musée Rodin.

Art market

In June a cast was put up for sale at Christie's in Paris with an estimate of up to €14m. The cast was made in about at the Rudier Foundry, founded by Alexis Rudier () who worked with Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol.^[5]

Reception

Max Linde had a copy of the monumental version cast in and placed it in the garden of his villa, Lindesche Villa.

There Edvard Munch painted his painting Rodin's Thinker in the Garden of Dr. Linde, which is now in the Behnhaus. The cast later went to the Detroit Institute of Arts.^[6]

In his film The Excellent Dictator,Charlie Chaplin shows the Venus de Milo and Rodin's Thinker with the modification that the left arms are stretched out in the Hynkel salute.^[7] With this allusion to the Nazi salute, Chaplin addresses the integration of art into Nazi propaganda.^[8] In the film Night at the Museum 2, the protagonists encounter a statue of the Thinker that has been brought to life.

When asked a question, he stutters: "I thinkI thinkI think." Later in the film, he flirts with a statue of Aphrodite.^[9] In Death at a Funeral, the statue is quoted as Alan Tudyk sitting naked on a rooftop in a "thinking pose."^[10] In Midnight in Paris, the then French first lady Carla Bruni made a cameo appearance as a tour guide, explaining the sculpture of the Thinker to a group of American visitors in the garden of the Musée Rodin.

In singer Ariana Grande's "God Is a Woman" music video, she sits in the Thinker pose while entity attacked by small angry men. They throw into them words taken from the book they are on. However, these bounce back off the singer when they reach her.

As part of the &#;[de] project launched in Mannheim for the painting of houses in the city with large-scale wall paintings (so-called murals) by national and international artists from the street art scene, Rodin's Thinker was taken up and the mural The Latest Thinker implemented.

Similar sculptures

Repetitive portrayals of individuals, both male and female, have been depicted in physical form while in the process of contemplation or grieving.

The "Karditsa Thinker" is a Neolithic clay figurine found in the area of Karditsa in Thessaly, Greece.

This unique artifact, dated around BCE, during the Final Neolithic period ( BCE), is a large solid clay figurine of a seated gentleman. Despite some clumsiness in detail, it conveys the impression of a robust man looking upwards with a manly bearing.

The figurine exhibits features of fully developed sculpture and is considered the largest Neolithic artifact set up in Greece. The pronounced ithyphallic element, though mostly broken, along with its size, suggests a possible cultic character, possibly acting for an agrarian deity associated with the fertility of the land.^[11][12]

The Thinker from Yehud is an archaeological figurine discovered during salvage excavations in the Israeli town of Yehud.

The figurine, which sits atop a ceramic jug in a posture resembling "The Thinker", dates back to the Middle Bronze Age II Palestine (c.

Enlarged in , its colossal version proved even more popular: this image of a man lost in thought, but whose powerful body suggests a great capacity for action, has become one of the most celebrated sculptures ever known.

– BCE). It was found in a tomb accompanied by various items, including daggers, spearheads, an axe head, a knife, two male sheep, and a donkey, all likely buried as offerings. After its discovery, the broken jug had to be stabilised and restored before being displayed in the Canaanite Galleries of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.^[13]

The "Thinker of Cernavodă", Romania, a terracotta sculpture, and its female counterpart, "The Sitting Woman", are works of art from the Chalcolithic era.

The Hamangia tradition produced these remarkable sculptures, with The Thinker believed to be the earliest prehistoric sculpture that conveys human self-reflection instead of the more common artistic themes of hunting or fertility.^[14][15] The discovery of the Spong Guy, which is the earliest recognizable Anglo-Saxon sculpture of a person, was found in Europe's other end, five millennia.^[16] The sculpture takes the form of a seated figure on a pottery lid of a cremation urn, resembling a humanoid figure.^[17]

A thousand years later, Michelangelo created the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, which is located in the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy.

The tomb is a sculptural masterpiece and was commissioned by Pope Clement VII to honor the memory of the Duke of Urbino, a member of the powerful Medici family of Florence. The tomb is considered one of Michelangelo's finest works in sculpture and was created in the Mannerist approach of the Late Renaissance period.^[18] The tomb features a immense rectangular base, which is adorned with intricate reliefs and two sculptures, Dusk and Dawn, that represent the cycle of life.^[19] The central figure on the tomb is a sculpture of the Duke, who is portrayed as a thinker with his face in shadow and his elbow resting on a wealth box with a similarly muscular, contemplative figure with his hand on his chin, though the figure is seated rather than standing like Rodin's "The Thinker".

The tomb also includes two reclining figures on the sarcophagus that are believed to illustrate Day and Night.^[20]

See also

References

External links

• The "Penseur", a poem by Philadelphia poet Florence Earle Coates at Wikisource
• Artwork listing at the Musée Rodin website
• The Thinker Inspiration, Analysis and Critical Reception
• The Thinker projectArchived at , Munich.

  Discussion of the history of the many casts of this artwork.

• The Thinker, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Object Number , bronze cast No. 10, edition of
• Auguste Rodin and The ThinkerArchived at the Wayback Machine, the story behind his most iconic sculpture of all time at
• Rodin: The B.

  Gerald Cantor Collection, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on The Thinker