NEW YORK — Two early casts from Auguste Rodin’s masterpiece “The Gates of Hell” have cumulatively sold for $16.25 million at a New York City auction.
Sotheby’s could not immediately say who bought “The Thinker,” Tuesday evening. It sold for $15.285 million, setting a new record for the figure.
A later cast of the statue was auctioned for just under $12 million in 2010.
The full-scale sculpture was commissioned by publishing magnate Ralph Pulitzer in 1906 and made under Rodin’s supervision.
Another work, “The Kiss,” from 1909, did not sell. “Ugolino (oo-goh-LEE’-noh) and His Children” from 1883, sold for $965,000.
They were consigned by a private collector.
“The Gates,” based on Dante’s “Inferno,” was never fully realized. Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum owns the first bronze cast of “The Gates.”
