Museums around the world hold many Thinkers by Rodin. Not pirated copies or imitations: good bronzes in serious collections, all cast from the same model. The question of which one is the original does not have the answer one expects, and finding out why means looking at how a sculpture is made and, above all, at who decides where a work ends.
Rodin modelled the figure around 1880, about seventy centimetres high, to crown the tympanum of The Gates of Hell. At the time it was called The Poet and represented Dante contemplating the circles of Hell. He exhibited it separately in 1888, and so it became an autonomous work. In 1904 he enlarged it to monumental scale, and that large cast stood in front of the Panthéon in Paris from 1906 until it was moved to the artist's museum in 1922.
A bronze sculpture is not carved but cast. Rodin modelled in clay; moulds and plasters were taken from it, and the bronzes were produced from those moulds. Multiplicity is not a betrayal of the process: it is the process. There is no first bronze that is the work, with the others being copies of it, because they are all casts of the same model. And since Rodin authorised casts in different sizes and at different times, and since moulds last, the question of how many Thinkers there are has a disconcerting answer: the Musée Rodin, which holds the rights, merely states that numerous casts exist throughout the world.
So if the technique allows bronzes to be made indefinitely and none is more first than any other, where does the work end and the commodity begin? In France, the answer is given by a rule. The Intellectual Property Code states that an edition of a sculpture comprises no more than twelve casts, counting numbered casts and artist's proofs together, and that they are considered originals if they were made under the author's responsibility and are numbered, signed or otherwise duly authorised. The Musée Rodin applies exactly that: its editions number twelve, eight casts numbered from one to eight and four artist's proofs in Roman numerals, including earlier casts from the same edition. Twelve. Not one more.
That number was not dictated by Rodin, who died in 1917, nor did it come out of an aesthetic debate. It built up through administrative sedimentation: a 1967 tax rule defining what counted as an original work of art, an internal regulation of the Ministries of Culture and Finance that set the limit for the Musée Rodin in 1978, a 1981 anti-fraud decree requiring reproductions to be marked visibly and indelibly, and the later codification that placed it in the article still in force. In other words: the boundary between an original Rodin and a reproduction was drawn, decades after his death, by a finance ministry and a legislator.
Two bronzes from the same mould, formally equivalent, may have different status: one belongs to the authorised original edition and the other is a reproduction. But status does not depend solely on the edition number, as if twelve were art and thirteen rubbish. It depends on the model used, the scale, who authorised the cast, the numbering, the foundry marks and the documented provenance. And a reproduction is not a forgery: it can be perfectly legal if it is identified as such, and the Musée Rodin does in fact sell reproductions, although it makes them in resin so that no one mistakes them for the bronzes.
Because Rodin gave his models, moulds and rights to the French State in 1916, the museum can still complete editions that have not been exhausted. This means that a cast made this century, a bronze Rodin never saw, whose patina he did not choose and whose casting he did not supervise, can legally belong to an original Rodin edition. It is neither fraud nor trickery: it follows from the artist having left the moulds and the right to use them. And here lies the question that the law settles and art history does not: whether a bronze that never passed through his hands is his work in the same sense as one cast in his lifetime. The market, for its part, has already answered in its own way, and pays differently for a lifetime cast.
When only copies of an ancient sculpture survive, the original existed and was lost, and the copies try to approximate something that once was. Here nothing has been lost. The work is multiple from its conception, because that is how bronze works, and so someone has to decide how many casts fit within the category of original. It is not a conservation problem; it is a problem of definition, and it has been settled with a number.
Twelve. A reasonable figure, no doubt, one that prevents indefinite production and protects the value of what already exists. But a figure, not a property of the object. Nothing in the metal of cast number eight sets it apart from what would have been number thirteen. The difference between an original Rodin and a Rodin reproduction lies, ultimately, not in the bronze but in an article of the French Intellectual Property Code.
On the open conversation
This text starts from a verified legal fact: in France, the original edition of a sculpture may comprise up to twelve casts, counting numbered casts and artist's proofs together, and the Musée Rodin applies that limit as eight casts plus four proofs. What interests me is that, when technique allows multiplicity, the category of original is set not by a physical difference but by a rule. In passing, I correct a widely circulated claim: the limit does not come from a 1956 decree, but from a development that begins with the 1967 tax regulation, is applied to the museum in 1978, is reinforced by the 1981 anti-fraud decree and now appears in the Intellectual Property Code. And I distinguish what the rule decides (the status of original edition, for the purposes of the artist's resale right) from what it does not (the historical value of a lifetime cast compared with a posthumous one). If anyone wishes to contribute from art law, conservation or the market, this notebook remains open.
Sources
French Intellectual Property Code, Article R.122-3 (in force since 25 June 2022, following Decree 2022-928): ‘Les éditions de sculpture, dans la limite de douze exemplaires, exemplaires numérotés et épreuves d’artiste confondus’, considered originals if they are ‘numérotées ou signées ou dûment autorisées d’une autre manière par l’auteur’. The article sits within the provisions on the artist's resale right.
Genealogy of the rule: Decree 67-454 (10 June 1967, tax); joint regulation of the Ministries of Culture and Finance for the Musée Rodin (5 September 1978); Decree 81-255 (3 March 1981, on fraud and the marking of reproductions); Decree 93-163 (1993, on the Musée Rodin).
Musée Rodin: ‘The museum limits its original editions to twelve casts, numbered 1/8 to 8/8 and I/IV to IV/IV, including the existing original editions’; warning about reproductions and aftercasts; its reproductions are made in resin. The museum states that ‘numerous casts exist worldwide’, without publishing a definitive total.
The work: 1880 model (~70 cm) for The Gates of Hell, initially titled Le Poète; exhibited independently in 1888; enlarged to monumental scale in 1904. Rodin donated his models, moulds and rights to the French State in 1916 (Law of 22 December 1916) and died on 17 November 1917.
On the historical casts: Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin.