Who was The Thinker originally intended to represent?

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Portrait of Auguste Rodin standing indoors, wearing a buttoned, two-toned coat with a full beard and tousled hair, looking slightly to the side. — Auguste Rodin French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

The Thinker, a famous work by French sculptor Auguste Rodin, was originally titled The Poet.1

Conceived as part of the larger project The Gates of Hell, the figure was intended to represent Dante Alighieri, the author of The Divine Comedy. In this original context, the figure was positioned on the tympanum above the doors, observing the suffering characters from Dante’s Inferno. While some scholars maintain this identification, others note that the sculpture's muscular and bulky physique contrasts with traditional, more slender depictions of the poet.1

Rodin eventually renamed the piece The Thinker after he began exhibiting it as an independent work in 1888.1