Auguste Rodin conceived the figure as part of his work The Gates of Hell commissioned in 1880, but the first of bronze castings was made in 1904, and is now exhibited at the Musée Rodin, in Paris. Rodin based his work on the early 14th century poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and most of the figures in the work represented the main characters in the poem with The Thinker at the center of the composition.
There are also 27 other known full-sized castings, in which the figure is approximately 185 cm (73 inches) high. There are various other versions, several in plaster, and studies and posthumous castings exist in a range of sizes.
