A god creator: Rodin represented himself as such in his symbolic auto portraits. The subject is taken

 from the Ovid’s Metamorphoses: while Vulcan models the first woman and Venus gives her a

soul, Pygmalion contemplates with adoration the statue that he is sculpting, which upon her

prayer, Venus will transform in a woman. Rodin explained to Paul Gsell that the starting point of

the group was Le Minotaure (around 1886). The first plaster used a female study (modelled as a

link-up with Gates of Hell) with the animal of Minotaure, Rodin started off by cutting the left leg

of the animal so that the female figure which itself has been inverted and enlarged (cf. Etude

 pour Galatée), can find its place ; he then did away with the animal’s horns and changed its arms

The next step is the first translation into marble: if Pygmalion’s face remains the animal’s, the

horned foot is very apparent in the maquette as it stands at the forefront of the terrasse.