Eve (1902)

Auguste Rodin’s Eve (cast 1902) is displayed at Liverpool’s Walker Gallery. The Italian model upon whom it was based posed recoiling in shame at the awful crime Eve has committed, and the dreadful justice about to be meted. He originally intended the piece to stand alongside Adam by the Gates of Hell. This sounds appropriate to me, but the others are found at Paris and New York. Yet it is not hell from which she flinches, for of it she had little concept. Sin’s true horror is its vileness in the eyes of our Creator. Unbelievers often contemplate hell as a disagreeable and unjust tenet of Christian doctrine, yet they ignore how appalling it is in the sight of God, whose feelings and sensitivities they are content to ignore.