Paris Musée Rodin

79 rue de Varenne, 7ème. Varenne. ☎01 44 18 61 10; www.musee-rodin.fr. Open Tu-Su Apr.-Sept. 9:30am-5:45pm; Oct.-Mar. 9:30am-4:45pm; last entry 30min. before closing. Gardens open Tu-Su Apr.-Sept. 9:30am-6:45pm, Oct.-Mar. 9:30am-5pm. Café open Apr.-Sept. 9:30am- 5:30pm; Oct.-Mar. 9:30am-4:30pm. €6, seniors and ages 18-25 €4; special exhibits €7/5. Free first Su of the month and for under 18. Garden €1. Audioguides in 7 languages €4 each for permanent and temporary exhibits, combined ticket €6. Temporary exhibits housed in the chapel, to your right as you enter. Touch tours for the blind and educational tours available (☎01 44 18 61 24). Ground floor and gardens wheelchair accessible. MC/V.

The museum is located in the elegant 18th-century Hôtel Biron, where Auguste Rodin lived and worked at the end of his life, sharing it with the likes of Isadora Duncan, Cocteau, Matisse, and Rilke. During his lifetime (1840-1917), Rodin was among the country’s most controversial artists, classified by many as the sculptor of Impressionism (Monet was a close friend and admirer). Today, he is universally acknowledged as the father of modern sculpture.

According to many Parisians, the Musée Rodin is one of the best museums in Paris, and they’re right. Besides housing many of Rodin’s better known sculptures, including Le Penseur, Le Baiser and L’Homme au Nez Cassé, the hôtel and its surrounding garden are aesthetically appealing in their own right.

The hôtel’s garden displays Rodin’s works amid rosebushes and fountains, including the piece nearly all visitors go to the museum to see: Le Penseur (The Thinker), situated on the right side of the garden as you enter. Originally entitled The Poet, the piece was meant to depict Dante pondering his great epic poem, La Commedia Divina. Across the garden a miniature of this contemplative man can be seen atop La Porte de L’Enfer (The Gate of Hell), which depicts the hellish cast of characters from The Inferno, the first third of La Commedia Divina. Viewing machines placed in front of the sculpture (which is six meters high, four meters wide and one meter deep) allow visitors to look more closely at the anguished faces of souls damned to purgatory. Originally commissioned as the entrance doors for the new École des Arts Décoratifs, the Gates were never finished. In response to his critics, the master of French sculpture asked, “Were the cathedrals ever finished?”

Near Le Penseur stands the sculpture of a haughty man in robes: Balzac. Commissioned in 1891 by the Société des Gens de Lettres., the sculpture took years for Rodin to design and complete, causing a cold war to erupt between the sculpture and Société. After years of battle, Rodin cancelled the commission and kept the statue himself. Later in his life, he noted, “Nothing that I made satisfied me as much, because nothing had cost me as much; nothing else sums up so profoundly that which I believe to be the secret law of my art.”

After thoroughly exploring the gardens, enter the hotel for a concentrated dose of artistic mastery. Many of Rodin’s sculptures were based on characters or scenes from The Inferno. Le Baiser, for example, tells the story of Francesca da Rimini, who fell in love with her brother-in-law, Paolo Malatesta . Parallel to Dante's compassionate portrayal of Francesca in Canto V of The Inferno, Rodin's depiction shows the lovers in a moment of passion right before Rimini’s husband discovered and killed them—and never has adultery looked so good. The lovers' urgency shows through in small details—Paolo's muscular right arm, which becomes tender and graceful at his caressing hand, and Francesca's clenching toes, which rest on Paolo's foot. Rodin truly mastered masculine and feminine sensuality in this piece, whose hypnotizing momentum and force resound with Francesca's words in Canto V: Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona mi prese del costui piacer sì forte che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona. (Love, which pardons no loved one from loving, seized me with a pleasure so strong for him that, as you can see, still it does not leave me.)Romantics, prepare thyselves. It doesn't get better than this.

Other sculptures rest on antique furniture, and walls are casually adorned with works by artists like Renoir, Munch, van Gogh, Géricault, and Steichen. Rodin’s sculptures decorate the staircase and doorways; Les Bourgeois de Calais, a study of six men walking toward certain death, takes up an entire room.

The museum also has several works by Camille Claudel, Rodin’s muse, collaborator, and lover. Claudel striking L’Age Mûr has been read as her response to Rodin’s decision to leave her for another woman; the powerfully moving ensemble shows an angel of death dragging a man away from his pleading lover. Many, however, claim that it was Claudel who left Rodin, and it has recently been argued that she was also responsible for some of Rodin’s most celebrated works. Either way, her talent for capturing the essence of romance is undeniable—if you liked Rodin's Le Baiser, spend some time (a few hours in front of Claudel's La Valse, a union of staggering complexity and beauty.