One of Rodin's most dramatic works, "The Shade" is development of "Adam" the figure in which the artist deposited most fully the lessons he had learned from the study of the sculpture of Michelangelo.

Rodin visited Italy in 1875. During his stay in Florence, he studied Michelangelo's figures of the Medici tomb in the church San Lorenzo and elsewhere. Returning to Bruxelles where he was engaged in decorative projects, Rodin immediately began work on a number of major works, including "Adam" and "The Age of Bronze". "Adam" and "Eve" were originally intended as full size statues to be placed on either side of the doors of the Musee des Art Decoratifs, or "Gates of Hell", for which Rodin had received the commission in 1880. Early in the project, the sculptor abandoned the flanking figures. Instead, he reformed "Adam" as "The Shade", one of three almost identical figures planned to be set on top of the door's pediment above "The Thinker".

Exaggerated in the proportions of his upper body - in part because of the placement and in part because Rodin employed a weightlifter as model - "The Shade" is imbrued with dynamic torsion. The title of the work, "The Shade" has its source in the "Inferno" and "Purgatorio" of Dante, the principle inspirations for the iconography of Rodin's "Gates of Hell".