Paris: Day 2, Part Trois

So I haven't been in Paris for a while now, but my blog is stuck in time.  I know anyone reading this has sorely missed my enchanting photographs and scintillating commentary, so you're all in luck!  Here's another installment of the Paris saga:

Musée Rodin

So just to throw everyone off, I started this post with five pictures of a sculpture that Rodin didn't even create!  In the courtyard outside the hôtel Biron, another building that we didn't even go into that showcases more work, there is this great big cathedral-esque thing.  It's by a Belgian artist named Wim Delvoye, and I think it's pretty darn cool.    

I should probably clarify by saying that these pictures are all from the Rodin sculpture garden, not from inside the actual museum.  I'm not really into taking pictures of pieces that are indoors or behind glass.  Anyway, L'Eglise du Dôme can be seen in the background of this shot-- the Rodin garden and museum are just a short walk from Les Invalides.  

Le Penseur
Oh hey, can someone direct me to Philosophy Hall?  

hôtel Biron
A place we did not go. 

Everywhere we've been in France there have been beautiful gardens.  

I apparently even found the dying vines pretty. 

I believe this one is "The Whistler Muse", a monument to a 19th century American painter named James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Musée Rodin
This is the main part of the museum.  I really enjoyed seeing the early sketches and models of statues that are housed here; seeing the "drafts", so to speak, sheds a lot of light onto Rodin's artistic process itself.   

Shout out to Melissa: Sun coming through leaves. 

This man is missing some essential anatomical elements.  Order of priority when it comes to body parts seems to be genitals first, head and other appendages second.   

La Porte de L'Enfer

The gates of Hell don't look so bad!  Perhaps there is hope after all...