Dome

Detail, the three figures with hands converging; In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the shades, i.e. the souls of the damned, stand at the entrance to Hell, pointing to an unequivocal inscription, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here". Rodin made several studies of Shades, before finally deciding (before 1886) to assemble three identical figures that seem to be turning around the same point. He placed them on top of The Gates, from where they could gaze down at the spectator. Michelangelo’s influence is obvious here. The angle at which the heads fall downward is so exaggerated that the necks and shoulders form an almost horizontal line. Profiting from the machine invented by Achille Collas in 1830, based on a pantograph system, Rodin employed skilled assistants, notably Henri Lebossé from 1894, for making enlargements or reductions of his models; this group was enlarged in 1904 to create a monumental independent group. Source: Musée Rodin [website]; http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/ (accessed 7/7/2014)