This article will use an in-depth visual analysis of the Gates of Hell and the Last Judgment describing how the form of the work relates to its function at interior of the representation of hell. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayWhen you find yourself in front of the Gates of Hell, you are immediately struck by its vastness, complexity and multitude of figures. The viewer imagines that Rodin has captured and shown the truth of something terribly human not normally open to prolonged observation. The Gates of Hell is “the drama of humanity, shown in the torments of the flesh and the soul” (Jianou). The main theme of Rodin's composition is the cycle of the evolution of human consciousness. The thinker is the man who has evolved in solitude, meditating as he faces his destiny as his strength lies in his ability to think about the world. In Ugolino and his children we witness the eradication of conscience which allows the animal to re-emerge in man. In the Old Courtesan we have the awareness of human frailty due to the effect of time. And then, finally, there is the conscience forgotten in giving in to the irresistible call of passion, Kiss and Fugit Amor. (Jianou) The latest version of the Gates of Hell includes no fewer than 186 figures. One of these is the Falling Man, it is a detail of the architrave of the Gates of Hell. Rodin shows his genius in depicting extreme muscular tension and the glimpse of the body suspended over the abyss. The Thinker is the central figure of the Gates of Hell, in his position he observes what happens below him. The Thinker serves a dual purpose as both a witness and participant in the tour, providing the reader with access to the events described in the text of the Divine Comedy as told firsthand. Without the figure of Dante in the Divine Comedy and on the Gates of Hell, the reader/spectator would have no personal access to the lessons of the infernal tour, but could only witness with passive fear the punishments of Hell like those who approach a church on Last Judgment Portal Stone. His task in Hell is to understand with open eyes the nature of human sin and from there find the right path which is that of reason guided by faith. What Rodin represents in the figure of Dante on the architrave of the Gates of Hell is exactly this: the soul that retains the ability to understand, that sees the truth of human existence and its limits, but has lost faith. His desire to find the "straight path" again, expressed in the tension of the powerfully contorted muscles of the body and in the clenched fist and furrowed forehead, now remains latent but is effectively present. Furthermore, among the many figures, a man can be seen crawling on his hands and knees like a scavenger animal, appearing unaware of the dead children who seem to cling to him. It illustrates the story of Ugolino, the traitor locked in a tower and left to starve together with his children who he ends up eating. Rodin's treatment is expressive because he shows us Ugolino's last moments when, reduced to a beast, he crawls towards the bodies of his dead children to devour them. There is also a woman clinging to a man's body. She is Francesca, earthly wife of a much older husband who fell passionately in love with Paolo, her brother-in-law/Tragedy strikes when Francesca and Paolo are murdered by her husband. Their adulterous passion leads them directly to hell. It shows lovers tossed and tossed by the winds of hell a punishment reserved for those guilty of lust. They are still Francesca and Paolo but now they have an imagegeneral of lovers who refuse to part. As John Berger observes regarding Rodin's sculptures in the round: Everyone is a prisoner of their contours... It is as if the figures were repelled into their material: if the same pressure were further increased, the three-dimensional sculptures would become bas-reliefs: if further increased, the bas-reliefs would become simple imprints on a wall. Hell's Gate, as Berger explains, is a "vast and enormously complex demonstration and expression of this pressure." If you look at the scene of the Last Judgment of Gislebertus, the idea would be clearer if you first looked at the architrave and examined it from left to right. On the lower edge of the architrave are sculpted tombs from which the dead are resurrected by the singing of angels' horns. In the center, under Christ's feet, stands an angel with a sword, dividing the elect from the damned. The elect occupy the left side of the architrave. Some are just emerging from their sarcophagi, others are inside or on top of them. The figures on the right half of the architrave represent the damned and the inscription under the corresponding half of the tympanum reads: “Here let fear strike those who bind earthly error, for their fate is shown by the horror of these figures”. The damned are all depicted naked. Some cover their faces in terror; a collector with a bag of money hanging around his neck and a snake coiled around his body is clearly screaming. An adulterous woman has two snakes biting her breasts. The figure next to her is strangled by two enormous claw-like hands. There is the figure of a saint holding a book, probably Saint John. Next to him stands the Archangel Michael, with two souls clinging to his robes seeking protection. The Archangel is weighing souls and has a devil as his opponent, the devil is made hideous not only by his monstrous head, tail and claws, but also by his skinny, skinny, half-human, half-reptilian body. Unlike Saint Michael, whose robes serve as a refuge for souls, the devil drags an unfortunate person by his hair while a three-headed serpent coils between his legs. The motif of the weighing of souls present in the tympanum is also closely related to Byzantine art. Since the subject is so familiar from the later Last Judgments, it is necessary to point out that this is one of its earliest known appearances in the West as part of a fully developed Last Judgment, although it had long been a standard feature of the Byzantine Last Judgments. The depiction of the subject at Autun is markedly similar to the Byzantine type, with stick-thin demons attempting to interfere with the action of the stairs. The Last Judgment forms are non-naturalistic, patterned, and dependent for their effect on a decorative use of distortion with angular postures and differences in scale. It is a sculpture that treats most of its shapes abstractly, such as trapeziums, triangles and circles based on the space they need to fill. The figure of Christ is flat, represented almost two-dimensionally as there is no concern for the proportions of the body. The French art historian Henri Focillon stated that this sculpture takes over the naturally chaotic world of man and subjects it to a geometric order completely indifferent to the natural world. On the other hand, in Rodin's Gate of Hell, the turbulent world of man is represented as it is with the integration of the characters. But, more importantly, it helps sculpture regain its modernity by breaking firmly with the pursuit of smoothness and fine finishes. The door, in fact, is composed of both parts, parts finely worked and finished like Ugolino's arms and others, right next to them, which bearcoarse traces of the sculptor's modeling fingers. Besides that, Rodin had many innovative ideas in relation to sculpture, one of which is the idea of ​​shadow repetition. All characters are exactly identical and sculpted from the same mold. Each is slightly angled relative to the others so that various aspects can be seen at a glance without being seen in the round. The second innovative element is Rodin's experimental simplification of the forms, who here takes advantage of an accident that causes him to lose his shadowy hands, making no attempt to hide the amputation: it is brutal and the effect is strengthened by the fact that for Rodin as a sculptor, the hands are the most important part of the body and this is shown throughout the rest of his works. In the tympanum of the Last Judgment there is little detail in the robe worn by Christ, a repetition of delicate lines indicating folds in the fabric. The fabric is pressed tightly against Christ's slender body, revealing bony, twig-like legs bent at the knee. The fabric begins to flow freely at the bottom above his feet. The fabric waves and curls, giving a sense of movement that echoes the foliage that embellishes the gable. All the figures are erect and elongated; these vertical lines suggest spirituality, rising beyond human reach into the sky. In Rodin's Gate of Hell, however, there are many diagonal lines that convey a sense of movement and instability. The vertical and horizontal lines that make up the shape of the gate communicate stability and permanence. Gislebertus managed to combine emotional tension with liturgical gravity, depth of modeling with superficiality of projection, varied in gestures, crowded with details but forming as a whole a superior composition of serenity and splendor. This truly demonstrates Gislebertus' genius as a sculptor. On a huge scale, the Last Judgment gable is meant to be seen in frontal view, it has a two-dimensional appearance which is why there are not many shadows cast. There is this dramatic use of depth that creates a contrast that gives the illusion that Christ is leaning forward in space compared to the rest of the characters in the rigid geometric arrangement. Meanwhile, the figures in the Gates of Hell range from nearly planar to the jambs are fully three-dimensional in the round sculptures of the panels and in the tympanum. Of all Rodin's works, the Gate of Hell is a sculpted surface that embraces both, two and three dimensions simultaneously. It is clear that Rodin wanted to reinterpret the bas-relief in such a way as to make the furniture part of the whole and allow the play of light to give variety to the sculptural motifs. He discovers the charm of light, of the intimate movement of surfaces and planes and of the pulsation of passion that enlivens form. He uses high lights, heavy shadows and transitions so fine that they give his sculpture the splendor of living flesh. Thus, in the same work, he alternates characters who just emerge from the surface of the door to full-figured characters who almost detach themselves from the background. This combination makes light and shadow more vivid across the entire surface. It also leaves room for imagination because the high relief releases the intensity and expressive power of the human form in an indeterminate space. Rodin's original concept for the spatial organization of the Gates of Hell was to arrange isolated episodes of various verses of Hell in a grid pattern, somewhat similar to Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. Rodin quickly abandoned this concept and was inspired instead by medieval relief sculptures with gables in which the figures alternately merge and emerge from their structure. Rodin's initial inspiration.