Conceived between 1885 and 1887, this example was cast in 1956. At least one cast of this model was made during Rodin’s lifetime. An edition of twelve casts was produced for the Musée Rodin between 1918 and 1966.

Between 1887 and 1888 Rodin was commissioned to illustrate a leather-bound copy of Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, which was owned by the publisher and book lover Paul Gallimard. The book contained the poem Poison, and it is in the margin of this poem that an illustration and early design for the present model can be found.

Some years later, when the sculptural work was first exhibited in Brussels, it was entitled Venus and Adonis, alluding to the moment when Venus tried to seduce Adonis before the young warrior went out for hunting. In 1898, the work was exhibited in London with the title Hero and Leander. The title suggested the moment, again from Greek mythology, when Hero leapt from her tower to join the dead body of Leander, who had perished whilst trying to swim across the Dardanelles to see her.

The final title describes the death of Adonis, the Greek God of beauty and desire, who was killed by a wild boar whilst hunting and died in the arms of Aphrodite. As was typical of his work, Rodin’s depiction of the story is full of ambiguity and sexual charge, not least because the figure of Adonis can be identified as the female figure from Man and his Thought, which appears on the upper lintel of The Gates of Hell.