[citation needed] The Directorate asked for an inviting entrance to a planned Decorative Arts Museum with the theme being left to Rodin's selection.

In 1919, two years after his death, the Hôtel Biron became the Musée Rodin, housing a cast of The Gates of Hell and related works.

Justice urged on my high artificer; My Maker was Divine authority, The highest Wisdom, and the primal Love.

Rodin conceived that people would walk toward the work, perhaps up a flight of stairs, and be overwhelmed frontally by the massive gates, contemplating the experience of hell that Dante describes in his Inferno.

Rodin was also inspired by Michelangelo's fresco The Last Judgment, Delacroix's painting The Barque of Dante, Balzac's collection La Comédie humaine and Baudelaire's poems Les Fleurs du mal.

Dante's Adam and Eve, for example, are in Paradise, thought to have been “rescued” from eternal damnation by Christ on Holy Saturday in the Harrowing of Hell.

[citation needed] The three shades are a transformation of three sinners whom Dante encounters in the Seventh Circle of murderers, suicides and homosexuals, all included among the violent against others, self and nature.