Among the Philadelphia installation’s 16 works is the plaster “Young Mother in the Grotto,” an ode to maternal love featuring a young woman and chubby baby, and “The Minotaur,” which depicts the mythological creature with a human face said to be a self-portrait, groping and leering at a woman who seems torn between desire and revulsion.

“The Damned” is a plaster cast that even Rodin thought was too racy to exhibit, with its two women in a lusty embrace, buttocks aloft.

Philadelphia’s version of “The Kiss” is a copy commissioned in 1926 by theater magnate Jules Mastbaum. The museum, which opened in 1929, was a gift to the city from Mastbaum, who was introduced to Rodin’s work during a 1923 trip to Paris.

Mastbaum hired two French-born architects living in Philadelphia, Paul Cret and Jacques Greber, to create the limestone museum, modeled on a 17th-century chateau Rodin preserved at his home in Meudon. Its holdings include more than 140 bronze, marble and plaster sculptures, plus drawings, prints, letters and books.

He and his architects wanted a great marble sculpture as the museum’s centerpiece. They got permission from the Musee Rodin in Paris to re-create “The Kiss,” and sculptor Henri Greber -- Jacques Greber’s father -- was selected and given a full-size plaster model to work from. It’s one of four copies of sculpture considered by some as his masterpiece.

“In all of these works, he’s sharing with us a catalog of passion,” Thompson said.