Rodin's "The Thinker" Started as a Poem From the 1300s

Few sculptures are recognized as quickly as Rodin's "The Thinker," and its beginning lies in literature, not in the studio. Artnet News reports that the work would never have existed without a poem written in the 1300s, about five centuries before the sculptor took it up. For readers who collect with an eye on where an object comes from, it shows that a masterwork can start as something read long before it becomes something made. Seen this way, the figure in deep thought carries a poem from six centuries ago inside it.

With reporting from Artnet News.