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Adam

Dark colored sculpture of muscular man standing in a contorted pose.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • Dark colored sculpture of muscular man standing in a contorted pose.

Date:

Modeled 1881, cast about 1924

Artist:

Auguste Rodin
French, 1840—1917

About this artwork

Auguste Rodin’s powerfully expressive figure of Adam was originally intended to be paired with a sculpture of Eve, flanking a sculptured bronze portal commissioned by the French government for the Musée de Arts Décoratifs, Paris. For this monumental undertaking, which he entitled The Gates of Hell, Rodin turned to past Italian masters. Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome (1508–12) inspired the pose of Rodin’s subject. Rodin rotated Michelangelo’s reclining Adam and transferred the frescoed figure’s gesture of receiving life from God to the sculpture’s right arm. The exaggerated turn of Adam’s left arm comes from Michelangelo’s sculpture of the dead Christ in his Pietà (1548–55; Museo del Duomo, Florence). Rodin chose the portal’s theme from Dante’s fourteenth-century epic poem Inferno; here Adam’s agonized body strikingly conveys the sufferings caused by original sin. Although the museum building was never constructed and the portal was not completed as originally conceived, Rodin explored the expressive potential of the human body as few artists before him had dared. As independent statues, Adam and Eve are among the commission’s numerous progeny. Not until 1938 was the gate cast in bronze and placed at the entrance to the grounds of the Musée Rodin, Paris.

Status

On View, Gallery 200

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist

Auguste Rodin

Title

Adam

Place

France (Object made in)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Modeled 1876–1886

Medium

Bronze with dark brown patina

Dimensions

198.1 × 73.7 cm (78 × 29 in.); Base: 76.2 × 73.7 cm (30 × 29 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Robert Allerton

Reference Number

1924.4

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/11320/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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