After meeting some political traitors, Dante and Virgil have come across Count Ugolino, who is gnawing the back of the head of Archbishop Ruggieri as a dog chews a bone. Their story is one of the most famous and horrific in the whole of the Divine Comedy.

Ugolino raises his mouth from the cleric’s head and wipes his lips on his victim’s hair. He then introduces himself and the Archbishop. He explains how he, a leading politician at the time, was imprisoned with his young sons and left to starve to death. In his hunger he tried gnawing his own hands, but his sons suggested that their father should eat them instead.

This glue tempera painting by William Blake is one of the few that isn’t taken from his last works illustrating the Divine Comedy, but is a prior work. Unfortunately, its equivalent in Blake’s last series got no further than a pencil sketch before the artist’s death.

Ugolino stopped gnawing his own flesh, and sat in silence day after day, watching his sons die in front of him. By the time the last was dead, the Count himself had gone blind. Once confident there was no life left in their bodies, his hunger overcame his grief.

In history, Ugolino was born into a Ghibelline family in the city of Pisa. He soon changed allegiance to the Guelphs, whom he helped in their quest for power in Pisa. When that was unsuccessful, the Count was imprisoned and exiled, but later led Pisan naval forces against its rival Genoa, for which he was made Pisa’s leader.

In an act of political expediency, Ugolino then handed over Pisan castles to Lucca and Florence, following which he conspired with Ghibellines including Archbishop Ruggieri. This backfired on him, and the Archibishop had him imprisoned with his two sons, two grandsons, and another young man. After eight months there, the door was locked and nailed shut, and its key thrown into the river. Ugolino and the five young men died fairly quickly of starvation.

As far as I’m aware, this painting of Count Ugolino and his Children in the Dungeon is the only work by Joshua Reynolds taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1773, nearly five hundred years after the death of the Count, I’m not aware that Reynolds had access to any contemporary images of his subject.

It’s therefore revealing that this slightly later copy was one of many images of the faces of the famous and infamous on which Lavater based his textbook of physiognomy, which in turn was popular among painters, making it a self-fulfilling fantasy.

Dante and Virgil move on from Ugolino’s tragedy to meet more traitors frozen into Lake Cocytus in Hell, as they make their way towards the bottom of its pit, and Lucifer himself.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Pierino da Vinci (1530–1553) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, the son of Leonardo da Vinci’s younger brother. He died of malaria, which was still endemic in much of Europe at that time, at the age of only 23, leaving few examples of his work.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still being used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian landscape painter, who worked mainly in Neoclassical style. During his second stay in Rome, he was commissioned to paint frescos in the Villa Massimi on the walls of the Dante Room there, which remain one of the most florid visual accounts of Dante’s Inferno. He completed those between 1824-29. He also appears to have drawn a set of illustrations for Dante’s Inferno in about 1808.

Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) was a Swiss poet and philosopher who was a friend of the painter Henry Fuseli. Between 1775-78, he published an early textbook on physiognomy, in which he related physical appearance, particularly of the face, to specific character traits of individuals. He did this using many illustrations of famous and infamous people. This attracted a popular following, including many artists.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) was the major portrait painter of his day, one of the co-founders and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He enjoyed royal patronage, and moved in the highest of artistic circles. However, his work and teaching were lambasted by William Blake, and some of his paintings have suffered serious problems in their paint layer as a result of his experimentation with pigments and technique.

Jan van der Straet, also commonly known by his Italianised name of Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), was a painter who started his career in Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, but moved to Florence in 1550, where he worked for the remainder of his life. Mannerist in style, he worked with printmakers in Antwerp to produce collections of prints, including an extensive set for The Divine Comedy.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

Why has the genius of these Black innovators been consigned to academic conferences?

After Dante and Virgil have heard the story of an alchemist who claimed to be able to transform base metals into gold, Dante mentions examples of those who have fallen victim to sudden changes of fate, in Thebes and Troy. But none compares to two of the spirits who sink their teeth into the flesh of others in this tenth rottenpocket. One is named as Gianni Schicchi, a Florentine fraudster who once impersonated a dead man to draw up a false will.

The other is Myrrha, who had incestuous desires for her father so passed herself off as another woman in order to sleep with him. Myrrha was transformed into the tree of that name, and her son was Adonis, the much-admired lover of Venus.

They also see Adam a notorious counterfeiter, Sinon the Greek who persuaded the Trojans to bring the wooden horse into their city, and Potiphar’s wife, who repeatedly tried to seduce Joseph before accusing him of trying to seduce her.

Virgil leads Dante on from the eighth circle of Hell towards the next, for the treacherous. As they approach in fog they hear a deafening horn, and Dante then sees what he thinks are the towers of a distant town; Virgil tells him that they are giants who stand circling the rim of Hell, among them the Titans who waged war against the gods of Olympus.

One of them, Antaeus, takes first Virgil then Dante in his hand to carry them onto Cocytus, the frozen lake forming the ninth circle of Hell.

Here, Dante finds contemporaries who betrayed their kin. Among them are two frozen together almost as one, the Tuscan Sassolo Mascheroni who murdered his cousin for an inheritance, and Camiscion de’ Pazzi who murdered his cousin for property.

Next they meet political traitors, including Bocca degli Abati, a Guelph who aided the opposing Ghibellines. They eventually come across Count Ugolino, who is gnawing the back of the head of Archbishop Ruggieri just like a dog chewing a bone. Their story opens the next article in this series.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) was a precocious and highly acclaimed academic painter who dominated the Salon in the late nineteenth century with his figurative works, often drawn from mythology. Classically trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, he grew infamous for his nudes painted against false settings, and his vehement opposition to Impressionism. However, he also taught at the Académie Julian, and worked tirelessly even when his paintings fell from favour.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still being used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) was a Swiss artist (originally Johann Heinrich Füssli) who first came to Britain in 1765, where he worked for much of his life. A successful portraitist and figurative painter, many of his works show the supernatural usually in melodramatic chiaroscuro and were unusual for the time. A professor of painting at the Royal Academy in London, his pupils included John Constable and William Etty, and he was an influence on William Blake. I have two articles about his career and extraordinary work, here and here.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

After they have talked with the notorious thief Vanni Fucci, Dante and Virgil move on and meet a centaur, identified by Virgil as Cacus, who had been killed by Hercules. Dante’s classical reference here is a little strange in that he gives an account of the killing of Cacus according to Livy, rather than Virgil’s version in his Aeneid.

The centaur flees, leaving the pair to meet three more tormented souls. A lizard-like creature then attaches itself to one of them named Agnello, a member of a prominent Florentine Ghibelline family, and their two bodies become one. Another is pierced by a serpent through his navel, and Dante witnesses other horrific reptilian transformations.

Having found five citizens of Florence in this rottenpocket of Hell, Virgil leads Dante through shattered rock to the eighth, where each of the souls is burning with fire in the pit in return for their fraudulent lives.

Virgil explains that among them are Ulysses and Diomedes, who are united in a single flame, telling an invented story of their final and fateful voyage. Dante didn’t have direct access to Homeric accounts of the adventures of Odysseus, so based this on Virgil’s contrasting retelling of the deception of the Trojan horse.

After that, another flame identifies itself as Guido da Montefeltro, and relates some of its life as a sly Ghibelline military leader who later repented and became a Franciscan friar.

Virgil takes Dante on to the ninth rottenpocket, where those who used fraud to incite division are suffering for their crimes. The gruesome sight awaiting them here is of gross mutilations, bodies chopped up and torn apart so that their organs spill out. They meet a succession of dismembered and dissected spirits, including Mosca de’ Lamberti, both of whose hands have been cut off. He had been responsible for creating the rift between Guelphs and Ghibellines that scarred Florentine history for so long. Another body passes by carrying its severed head like a lantern from one of its hands. The head tells them that he is Bertran de Born, a Provençal troubadour who sowed discord between King Henry II of England and his son Prince Henry.

Dante is so astonished by this display of butchery that he stands and stares at the bodies, but Virgil reminds him that they must move on.

The pair then reach a viewpoint over the last of the rottenpockets, from which arises a foul smell. The souls there are all covered with festering sores and scabs, and can only crawl over one another.

There they hear the story of Capocchio, an alchemist who falsely claimed to be able to transform base metals into gold.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still being used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

John Flaxman (1755–1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman who occasionally painted too. When he was in Rome between 1787-91, he produced drawings for book illustrations, including a set of 111 for an edition of The Divine Comedy. In 1810, he was appointed the Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy in London, and in 1817 made drawings to illustrate Hesiod, which were engraved by William Blake.

Jan van der Straet, also commonly known by his Italianised name of Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), was a painter who started his career in Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, but moved to Florence in 1550, where he worked for the remainder of his life. Mannerist in style, he worked with printmakers in Antwerp to produce collections of prints, including an extensive set for The Divine Comedy.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

When a group of devils armed with long hooks threatens Dante, Virgil hurries him along towards the next rottenpocket in Hell. They work their way around some of the damage wrought by Christ’s harrowing of Hell following his crucifixion. With those devils still hanging around, they then reach a pit of boiling tar, in which the spirits of barrators are trapped. These had traded in public office and bought influence in courts of law.

The devils pull out one of the souls for Dante and Virgil to talk to, but quickly return to hacking with their hooks.

Unlike others, he springs free and escapes their lunges as he plunges back into the pitch.

Dante and Virgil leave the devils attacking other barrators, and walk on in silence. Dante reflects on one of Aesop’s fables about the frog, the rat and the hawk. He blames himself for the tormenting of the devils behind them, but as he looks back he sees them on the wing again heading towards them. As they cross into the next rottenpocket, they realise the pack of devils can’t pursue them beyond that point.

Next are hypocrites, who are dressed up in hooded habits like monks. Although those are coloured bright gold, they’re weighted with lead, forcing the hypocrites into eternal labour against the mass of their clothes.

Dante meets two Bolognese friars, Catalano de’ Malavolti and Loderingo degli Andalò, who formed a fake religious order. They point out a figure staked out naked on the ground, who is Caiaphas, the High Priest of Jerusalem who advised scribes and pharisees that Christ’s death would be a good solution.

Virgil moves Dante on towards the damaged crossing to the next rottenpocket for thieves. After negotiating their descent, Dante sees its pit full of snakes, binding the hands of the souls there and covering their naked bodies.

A snake strikes one of the sinners at the back of the neck, causing the ghost to burst into flames then turn into ash, which falls onto the ground and reconstitutes itself.

There they talk with one of the thieves by the name of Vanni Fucci, a black Guelph from Pistoia near Florence who had stolen holy objects from a chapel and betrayed an accomplice for execution in his place. The snakes then take charge of him, winding their coils around his neck and body, and putting him into a reptile straightjacket.

Dante and Virgil move on and meet a centaur.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still being used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

John Flaxman (1755–1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman who occasionally painted too. When he was in Rome between 1787-91, he produced drawings for book illustrations, including a set of 111 for an edition of The Divine Comedy. In 1810, he was appointed the Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy in London, and in 1817 made drawings to illustrate Hesiod, which were engraved by William Blake.

Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian landscape painter, who worked mainly in Neoclassical style. During his second stay in Rome, he was commissioned to paint frescos in the Villa Massimi on the walls of the Dante Room there, which remain one of the most florid visual accounts of Dante’s Inferno. He completed those between 1824-29. He also appears to have drawn a set of illustrations for Dante’s Inferno in about 1808.

Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835) was a Roman illustrator and engraver who provided illustrations for a great many books, and specialised in the city of Rome. He made 145 prints to illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy, most probably in the early nineteenth century.

Jan van der Straet, also commonly known by his Italianised name of Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), was a painter who started his career in Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, but moved to Florence in 1550, where he worked for the remainder of his life. Mannerist in style, he worked with printmakers in Antwerp to produce collections of prints, including an extensive set for The Divine Comedy.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

The appearance of new objects or unexpected phenomena in the sky was an event of great significance in the past, and often considered to be a portent of the future, good or bad. This article considers the few that were recorded in paintings, and starts with the most famous of all, the star of Bethlehem that appears in many depictions of the birth of Christ.

The linked stories of the birth of Christ in a shed at Bethlehem, and the subsequent adoration of the infant by three wise men, kings or Magi “from the east”, are among the most popular and enduring among paintings in the Christian canon. The outlines given in the Gospels of Luke, chapter 2, and Matthew, chapter 2, have conventionally become elaborated.

Three wise men had seen a new star, possibly a comet or an unusually bright planet, which they believed would lead them to the birth of a great prophet. They travelled by the guidance of that star, to arrive at Bethlehem. There they found the newborn Christ with Mary his mother, paid homage to him in the shed in which the holy family was lodging, and presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Giotto’s Adoration of the Magi from about 1305 shows the star as a celestial ball of fire streaking across the sky, and the three wise men pay their respects to the newborn Christ and his mother.

Above Bosch’s view of the local Brabant countryside in his Adoration of the Magi of 1490-1500 he places a more modest and stationary star shining bright over its distant city, as shown in the detail below.

Blake’s version of the Adoration of the Kings is conventional in showing the three wise men presenting their gifts to Jesus and his parents. At the left, outside, shepherds are tending to their flocks of sheep beneath a stylised star, and at the right are the ox and ass.

There remains controversy over what celestial event might have occurred at the time.

Very few paintings show known events in the sky, and I know of only one depicting a full solar eclipse.

Although many painters, particularly the Impressionists, have shown fleeting effects of light and the occasional rainbow, Enrique Simonet took the opportunity of a solar eclipse on 30 August 1905 to paint his Eclipse (1905). This was visible across eastern and northern Spain between about 1300 and 1320 UTC, and this painting is one of its few remaining records.

Realistic paintings of comets are also rare, and unimpressive.

Generally acclaimed as William Dyce’s finest painting, Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858 (c 1858) shows this bay on the Kent coast, during a family holiday visit: a coastal scene worked up into a large finished oil painting. Although not easily seen in this image, there’s a small point of light high in the middle of the sky which is Donati’s comet, not due to return until 3811. Couple that with the inclination of the sun and the state of the tide, and you should be able to place this view precisely in both time and space, and confirm that it does indeed show this bay on 5 October 1858.

A few paintings show impossible celestial events.

John Martin’s painting of The Deluge from 1834 has two points of reference: the Biblical account of the flood, and Martin’s personal belief in prior catastrophe. As the sciences became ascendant during the nineteenth century, some educated people believed that in the past there had been an alignment of the sun, earth, and moon, and the collision of a comet resulting in global flooding. This was promoted by the French natural scientist Baron Georges Cuvier, and subscribed to by Martin.

True to form, his painting is dark and apocalyptic: near the centre, tiny survivors are just about to be overwhelmed by an immense wave bearing down at them from the left and above. The misaligned sun and moon barely penetrate the dense cloud, and to the top right is a melée of rock avalanche and lightning bolt. This was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1835.

Several of Paul Nash’s surrealist landscapes show the moon in its phases, among them Landscape of the Vernal Equinox (III) from 1944, which presents the impossible view of a full moon and the sun visible close together and just above the horizon.

In their descent into the depths of Hell, Virgil and Dante have just entered circle eight for those who committed fraud in its broadest sense. This consists of what Dante refers to as malebolge, best translated as rottenpockets, a series of ten deep trenches each of which caters for a different type of fraud. Dante compares these to the defensive earthworks surrounding the outer walls of castles of the day.

Virgil leads Dante into the first of these rottenpockets, where souls are being lashed by demons to keep them moving constantly. These are pimps and seducers, among whom is a Bolognese man, a Guelph, who pimped his sister, the beautiful Ghisolabella, for political gain.

The pair move on past other sinners being scourged, where they see Jason, who seduced then abandoned the young Hypsipyle, queen of Lemnos, and later did the same with Medea. They then enter the second rottenpocket, for flatterers, who are wallowing in excrement.

They find a contemporary figure from Lucca, and see Thaïs, a Greek courtesan who notoriously flattered her partners. She is now covered in filth and thoroughly crabby.

In the third rottenpocket, Dante and Virgil come across corrupt religious leaders or Simonists, who sold church privileges, and are trapped headfirst in rock holes, their protruding feet being roasted with flames. The key figure here is Pope Nicholas III, who at first confuses Dante with Pope Boniface VIII, who is also in the same rottenpocket. Pope Nicholas was known for his nepotism, which included appointing three of his own family as cardinals.

Virgil carries Dante on to the fourth rottenpocket, reserved for soothsayers. Their heads are turned to face backwards, so that the tears streaming from their eyes wet their buttocks.

Virgil identifies several of them from classical times, including the Theban Tiresias; Dante recounts how he became a soothsayer after he had twice changed gender, as told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. The list concludes with three near-contemporaries: Michael Scot, a scholar and astrologer to Emperor Frederick II, and two well-known Italians.

The fifth rottenpocket they find to be filled with corrupt public officials, or barrators, who sold public appointments and are immersed in a sea of boiling pitch, while being further tormented by a pack of vicious devils known as malebranche, ‘evil-claws’.

The latter are armed with long hooks, which they use to push the souls down into the pitch, much as you might push down lumps of meat that rise to the surface of a stew. Those devils are so evil as to threaten Dante, so Virgil whisks him on to the next rottenpocket for hypocrites.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is not only intentional, but of their own making.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still being used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

Giotto di Bondone (c 1267–1337) was one of the great masters who bridged between the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. He was born near Florence, and is reputed from about 1296 to have painted a cycle of frescoes in the Basilica di San Francesco d’Assisi, in Assisi. This is hotly disputed though, and those may have been painted by Cimabue instead. The scene of The Devotion of the Devils from Arezzo shows what may, directly or indirectly, have been an inspiration to Dante, although I don’t know whether there is any evidence that the poet ever visited Assisi.

Jan van der Straet, also commonly known by his Italianised name of Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), was a painter who started his career in Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, but moved to Florence in 1550, where he worked for the remainder of his life. Mannerist in style, he worked with printmakers in Antwerp to produce collections of prints, including an extensive set for The Divine Comedy.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

From their tragic encounter with tormented souls in the Suicide Wood, Virgil leads Dante onto a barren and sandy plain, where groups of spirits are in different postures, naked under steady showers of flakes of fire. These fall on their flesh, and set the sand afire underneath them. They are being punished for their differing acts of violence against God: blasphemers lie flat on their backs, sodomites are moving at all times, and usurers crouch with purses strung from their necks.

The two talk with Capaneus, a huge man who was once a powerful king and waged war against the city of Thebes, and a blasphemer who was struck by a thunderbolt for his arrogance towards the (classical and pagan) gods.

Among the sodomites is the prominent Guelph encyclopaedist Brunetto Latini (c 1220-94), who may well have been Dante’s mentor at one time. Also identified are Priscian a Latin grammarian, Francesco d’Accorso a legal scholar, and Andrea de’ Mozzi a bishop of Florence, together with three other Florentines.

Virgil explains some more of the topography of Hell, how waters originating from a statue on Mount Idaeus (Ida) on the island of Crete flow down to form its three principal rivers, the Acheron, Styx and Phlegethon. The statue of the Old Man of Crete has a gold head, silver arms, brass torso, and iron below, apart from a terracotta foot. This follows the mythical ‘ages of mankind’ in descent, and its tears feed the waters of Hell.

Dante is next led down towards a vile monster with the face of an honest man but the body of a serpent, its body seemingly tattooed with knots and whorls, and a sting at the end of its great tail: this is Geryon, in classical myth a cruel king who was killed by Hercules, and here forming an image of fraud.

Before reaching that monster, the pair see some usurers on the ground. They are identified as contemporary members of prominent Florentine and Paduan families known for their riches and usury.

Virgil then jumps onto Geryon’s back, and encourages Dante to have courage to join him there. Once they have both boarded, Virgil tells Geryon to fly off, and the monster carries them down through a hundred spiralling turns to the foot of a high cliff.

Virgil and Dante have now descended to circle eight.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still in current use. They were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

John Flaxman (1755–1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman who occasionally painted too. When he was in Rome between 1787-91, he produced drawings for book illustrations, including a set of 111 for an edition of The Divine Comedy. In 1810, he was appointed the Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy in London, and in 1817 made drawings to illustrate Hesiod, which were engraved by William Blake.

Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian landscape painter, who worked mainly in Neoclassical style. During his second stay in Rome, he was commissioned to paint frescos in the Villa Massimi on the walls of the Dante Room there, which remain one of the most florid visual accounts of Dante’s Inferno. He completed those between 1824-29. He also appears to have drawn a set of illustrations for Dante’s Inferno in about 1808.

Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835) was a Roman illustrator and engraver who provided illustrations for a great many books, and specialised in the city of Rome. He made 145 prints to illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy, most probably in the early nineteenth century.

Francesco Scaramuzza (1803–1886) was an Italian painter who specialised in mythological and historical narratives. He became obsessed with Dante’s Divine Comedy, and for much of his career worked on producing paintings and drawings of its scenes. He worked mainly in Parma, in Italy.

Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844) was the greatest Danish sculptor, and one of the foremost in Europe. He worked most of his life in Italy, although the Thorvaldsens Museum with much of his work is in the city of Copenhagen, in a place of honour by the Christiansborg Palace. From humble origins, he trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Art, where he was extremely successful. He arrived in Rome in 1797, and remained there until 1838, when he was welcomed as a returning hero in Copenhagen.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

Virgil has led Dante into a gorge taking them from the heretics further into the depths of Hell. As they descend, Virgil advises they should take their time so they can become accustomed to the stench emanating from these depths. This allows him to explain to Dante the layout of the parts they are about to enter.

Within the next pit are three sub-divisions, catering for the sins of malice in their different forms. The first ring is for those of violent will, and is divided again into three, for homicides and bandits, for suicides, and blasphemers. Dante’s verbal descriptions of these sub-divisions can readily become confusing, and have been turned into diagrammatic maps by several artists.

One of the most famous is Botticelli’s Map of Hell from 1480-90, in which these lower zones are shown as a funnel at the bottom, leading to the Devil himself.

Jan van der Straet’s diagram from 1587 is similar in form, and packs these zones into the narrow section at the foot.

Dante opens Canto 12 as the pair are scrambling down boulders as if in the Alps, dislodged during the earthquake resulting from Christ’s harrowing of Hell, to meet the Minotaur from Crete.

Like so many of Dante’s beasts, the Minotaur is drawn from classical mythology. This monstrous cross between a bull and human was kept in the labyrinth on Crete, where it was periodically fed with young Greek men and virgin women. For George Frederic Watts, in his painting of The Minotaur from 1885, it represented the worst of Victorian society and its moral values, in the industry of child prostitution flourishing in London at the time.

Dante and Virgil hurry past the Minotaur when they can, and continue their descent through more fallen boulders and scree, to enter the seventh circle, for sins of violence. They are then hailed by one of a group of centaurs armed with bows and arrows. Virgil responds that they will discuss their mission with Chiron, rather than the hot-headed Nessus. Chiron was a centaur in mythology, but one known for his wisdom, and for teaching the young Achilles. Nessus was another centaur, who tried to abduct Heracles’ wife Deianeira and was killed for that, but laid a plot that led to Heracles’ death.

Chiron directs Nessus to aid Virgil and Dante in their passage.

They pass along the rocks beside the damned souls, who are immersed in boiling blood to a depth appropriate to their sins. Dante recognises some as they go: Alexander the Great, Dionysius the Elder and tyrant of Syracuse, one of the d’Este family who was suffocated by his own son. Further on are Attila the Hun, Pyrrhus, Sextus son of Pompey, and a couple of infamous contemporary highwaymen.

Virgil then leads Dante into a strange wood, whose thorn trees form the nests of Harpies. These composite creatures have the heads of humans and the bodies and talons of birds, and live in sub-ring number two. In classical legend, the Harpies inhabited the Strophades, islands where they attacked Aeneas and his companions in Virgil’s Aeneid.

Virgil tells Dante to break a small branch from one of the trees. When he does, the tree screams out in pain, and the wound oozes blood. The tree explains that they were once people, but had taken their own lives. In this case, Dante is talking to the poet Pier della Vigna, who was ruined by envious rivals.

Dante is filled with pity for the spirit, who can only look forward to the Day of Judgement, while they are tortured by the Harpies feeding on their leaves. After learning of another two suicides from Siena and Florence, Dante moves on in profound sorrow.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) was one of the leading painters of the early Southern Renaissance, working in his native city of Florence. In addition to his huge egg tempera masterpieces of Primavera (c 1482) and The Birth of Venus (c 1485), he was a lifelong fan of Dante’s writings. He produced drawings that were engraved for the first printed edition of the Divine Comedy in 1481, but these weren’t successful, most copies only having two or three of the 19 engraved. He later began a manuscript illustrated edition on parchment, but few pages were ever fully illuminated.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still continuing in use. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

John Flaxman (1755–1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman who occasionally painted as well. When he was in Rome between 1787-91, he produced drawings for book illustrations, including a set of 111 for an edition of The Divine Comedy. In 1810, he was appointed the Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy in London, and in 1817 made drawings to illustrate Hesiod, that were engraved by William Blake.

Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian landscape painter, who worked mainly in Neoclassical style. During his second stay in Rome, he was commissioned to paint frescos in the Villa Massimi on the walls of the Dante Room there, which remain one of the most florid visual accounts of Dante’s Inferno. He completed those between 1824-29. He also appears to have drawn a set of illustrations for Dante’s Inferno in about 1808.

Jan van der Straet, also commonly known by his Italianised name of Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), was a painter who started his career in Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, but moved to Florence in 1550, where he worked for the remainder of his life. Mannerist in style, he worked with printmakers in Antwerp to produce collections of prints, including an extensive set for The Divine Comedy.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

Dante and Virgil are ferried across the River Styx to land at the entrance to the city of Dis, the lower depths of Hell (circles 6-9), but its gate is slammed shut on Virgil when he tries to secure their admission. He reassures Dante that he has been here once before, but Dante is staring at the top of the gate where the three Furies have appeared, wreathed in snakes.

Virgil names them to Dante: Megaera on the left, Alecto to the right, and Tisiphone between them. Megaera represents evil deeds, Tisiphone evil words, and Alecto evil thought. They are another crossover drawn from classical mythology into Dante’s Christian Hell.

The Furies call on Medusa to turn Dante to stone with the sight of her face, and Virgil makes Dante turn to look away from them, and close his eyes tightly.

A strong wind then blows across the marsh of the Styx towards them, as a mass of ghosts there part to make way for an angel who walks across the water towards the walls of Dis. Virgil gets Dante to bow in deference to the angel as he passes them by and opens the gate of Dis for them with his rod. The angel chides those inside for their resistance and immediately returns the way he came.

Virgil then leads Dante through the open gate onto a plain, its ground made uneven by the many tombs set in its surface. The stones on top of them are open, revealing flames within, and letting out cries of pain. Virgil explains that these contain heretics and their followers, and that their lids will only be closed with the Final Judgement. By heresy, Dante here means that these sinners denied the immortality of the soul.

Virgil points out the tomb of the Epicureans, then Dante is startled by the appearance of the head and upper body of Farinata degli Uberto in another.

Farinata was the leader of the Ghibellines of Florence, a family grouping that had been fighting against the Guelphs, including Dante himself. The Florentine then asks Dante who his ancestors were, and reveals that he had opposed Dante’s family. With Farinata are the last Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Cardinal Octavian, Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, who had been a powerful supporter of the Ghibellines prior to his death in 1273.

With Dante thinking on what he had heard, Virgil leads him into a gorge, in which they descend deeper into Hell.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still remain in use. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

John Flaxman (1755–1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman who occasionally painted too. When he was in Rome between 1787-91, he produced drawings for book illustrations, including a set of 111 for an edition of The Divine Comedy. In 1810, he was appointed the Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy in London, and in 1817 made drawings to illustrate Hesiod, which were engraved by William Blake.

Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian landscape painter, who worked mainly in Neoclassical style. During his second stay in Rome, he was commissioned to paint frescos in the Villa Massimi on the walls of the Dante Room there, which remain one of the most florid visual accounts of Dante’s Inferno. He completed those between 1824-29.

Bernardino Poccetti (1548-1612) was an Italian Mannerist painter and print-maker who was born in Florence and painted some magnificent frescoes in the palaces of the richest families there.

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was an American painter who worked much of his career in Europe. Trained in Paris, he was a highly successful portraitist in Paris then London. One of the most gifted and prolific painters of the nineteenth century, his work is rich in bravura brushstrokes and highly individualistic. In his later career, he painted large murals on the East Coast of America, including Orestes Pursued by the Furies in Boston, MA, which he started in 1922, and completed in 1925, just prior to his death. Over its 100 square feet of canvas, it shows a young and naked Orestes cowering under the attacks of the Furies, as he tries to run from them.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

In yesterday’s article, I looked at how William Blake’s late painted etching of The Ancient of Days isn’t what it seems, and tells a story unique to Blake’s personal mythology. This article looks an earlier work that until relatively recently was misidentified as a painting of Hecate.

According to Blake’s mythology, Enitharmon is partner, twin, and inspiration to Los, and mother of Orc. She is spiritual beauty, and her image here was most probably modelled on the artist’s wife Catherine. In The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (c 1795), she establishes her Woman’s World, with a false religion of chastity and vengeance, which is Blake’s view of the 1800 year history of the ‘official’ Christian church.

As the moon to the sun of Los, she is accompanied by symbols of night, such as the owl and bat. She also plays the role of Eve, which may explain the head of a snake peering out towards her. The donkey eating thistles underlines Blake’s rejection of the ‘official’ church, and the two figures behind Enitharmon face in and bow their heads in guilt. The book on which Enitharmon’s left hand rests is Urizen’s ‘Book of brass’, in which his repressive laws are laid down.

If you didn’t know Blake’s mythology, identifying her as Hecate seems reasonable.

Stéphane Mallarmé’s drawing of a classical sculpture of Hecate, Greek Goddess of the Crossroads was engraved for his illustrated account of classical mythology published in 1880. This is her most conventional representation: fully triple-bodied, holding a key at the left, and torches to the left and right, with a symbol of the moon on her forehead.

Hecate has also been depicted more like Eve with a serpent, as seen in Francesco de’ Rossi’s fresco of her from 1543-45. He hints at her triple body with the heads on which she is standing, and she wears a coronet of the moon, her association with night, hence with the owl in Blake’s painting.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau flies his owls in support of a personification of the mythical Night (1883), as do others painting similar motifs. But the owl is also famously associated with Minerva.

Hendrik Goltzius shows a classical and fairly complete set of her attributes in his Minerva (as the Personification of Wisdom) from 1611: the owl, her distinctive helmet, here decorated with olive leaves, a spear, books, and great beauty.

Blake’s mythology has an elaborate and sometimes opaque genealogy. Los and his emanation Enitharmon have children, the first of whom is Orc. As Los is spiritual revolution, so Orc is revolution in the material world. Orc hates his father Los in an Oedipus complex of love for his mother Enitharmon. As shown in Los and Orc (c 1792–3) above, Los is driven to bind Orc to a rock on the top of Mount Atlas, using the chain of jealousy. Orc’s limbs then become rooted in the rock, pinning him there. This cannot prevent Orc’s imagination from raging, though, and permeating everything.

One of the fundamental concepts in Blake’s mythology is that of pairings: there are many elements with both male and female counterparts, the latter being termed emanations. These might take the generation of Eve from Adam as their prototype. Nowhere does Blake envisage a pantheon of gods, but stretches the Jewish and Christian concepts of a single God, going far beyond the Christian Trinity. These include expressions of God associated with particular eras, such as the vengeful God of the Old Testament, and those of particular interpretations that Blake deprecates.

William Blake wasn’t the only artist in Britain at the time who painted new stories. Henry Fuseli did too.

Fuseli’s painting of Percival Delivering Belisane from the Enchantment of Urma (1783) shows a narrative that the artist had invented for this painting. It appears to be one of a series, although only one other work has been identified as part of that, and that is only known from a print of 1782. He also preceded this series with a single painting of Ezzelin and Meduna (1779), referring to another unique narrative, which doesn’t appear to have any associated works.

Fuseli provides the viewer with a rich array of ‘Gothic’ narrative elements to form their own account of the story. There are visions of faces in the distance on the left, chains leading to an unseen figure apparently manacled into a bed at the right, Percival swinging a sword above his head, to strike the cloaked figure of Urma in the left foreground, and a beautiful young woman, presumably Belisane, embraced by Percival’s left arm, kneeling on the floor.

References

Blunt, A (1959) The Art of William Blake, Oxford UP.
Butlin, M (1981) The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, 2 vols, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 02550 7.
Damon, S Foster (2013) A Blake Dictionary, the Ideas and Symbols of William Blake, updated edn., Dartmouth College Press. ISBN 978 1 61168 443 8.
Vaughan, William (1999) William Blake, British Artists, Tate Publishing. ISBN 978 1 84976 190 1.

One of the golden rules in narrative painting is to tell stories that the viewer is already familiar with, because of the limitations imposed by still images. By the middle of the nineteenth century, though, artists were breaking that rule in what became a new sub-genre of the ‘problem picture’, with open-ended narrative encouraging the viewer to construct their own stories. William Blake was a precursor to that in some of his paintings, and this weekend I look at two examples that try to tell stories we’re unfamiliar with.

At first sight, Blake’s painted etching The Ancient of Days from about 1821 might represent the Christian God seen as master craftsman, forming the world out of the darkness below heaven. That would be an innovative but hardly revolutionary interpretation of the opening of the book of Genesis.

That wasn’t Blake’s intention, though. This represents Urizen, one of many figures from his own mythology, and documented only in the artist’s writings. There, Urizen symbolises reason, his name most probably a semi-conscious pun on your reason. This painting shows Urizen the architect, creating the world using his compasses. He goes on to have the role of the jealous and vengeful god of the Old Testament, but his desire for dominion brings about his downfall into a state of Satan.

Representations of God as architect aren’t common, but Blake’s would be by no means unique.

This frontispiece to a Bible Moralisée from around 1220-30 shows the Christian God as architect, using his compasses during the creation of the world. The compasses continue in various modern symbols, including those that feature in freemasonry, and in its references to the Supreme Being as the Great Architect of the Universe.

Urizen typically appears with long and streaming white hair and beard, as in Blake’s plates throughout his First Book of Urizen from 1796.

But Urizen isn’t the only figure from Blake’s mythology who has long white hair and beard: above is Elohim Creating Adam from 1795, for example.

In Blake’s God Judging Adam also from about 1795, both figures sport long, flowing white hair and beards, which appear to be markers not so much of their ages or identities, but of the ancient nature of events.

Long white hair and beards are of course a long-established tradition in visual art: here is a contemporary example of Tiresias, the blind prophet of Apollo at Thebes, in Henry Fuseli’s Tiresias Appears to Ulysses During the Sacrifice (1780-85). Fuseli was Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, and a great influence on Blake.

Characteristic of the figure of Urizen in The Ancient of Days is the unusual way in which the figure’s hair and beard stream as if in a strong wind, the figure’s nakedness, and its posture.

This can be traced most immediately to a major work by another contemporary painter who was highly influential on Blake: James Barry’s King Lear Weeping over the Dead Body of Cordelia (1786–8). Barry was also Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, and the similarities between King Lear’s white hair and beard here, and those of Blake’s Urizen in The Ancient of Days, are striking.

Blunt found another potential source in Pellegrino Tibaldi’s figure of Neptune (1549-51) in his fresco showing the story of Ulysses in the Palazzo Poggi. Although now relatively obscure, Blake saw fresco as being ‘true’ art, and was long an enthusiast of frescos, even if he saw few. A contemporary popular book of prints of frescos included an engraving of Tibaldi’s Neptune, so this image would have been accessible to both Blake and Barry.

It’s likely that Tibaldi’s Neptune was itself a reference to Michelangelo’s earlier frescos in the Sistine Chapel: the detail above showing God creating the sun and moon, and even more important that below showing the creation of Adam (c 1511).

Blake knew both of these sections of the Sistine Chapel frescos well, having engraved them previously. They also link to Blake’s own Elohim Creating Adam above.

Blake’s Urizen the architect, seen creating the world using his compasses, is distinct from both God and Elohim in his nakedness. In Blake’s written narrative, the distinction between Urizen and Elohim becomes more blurred, when the former goes on to have the role of the jealous and vengeful god of the Old Testament, until his desire for dominion brings about his downfall.

It may be tempting to assume that, just because Blake’s paintings appear so original and different, they originate entirely from his own mind. However, Blake was just as likely to borrow from and refer to other visual art as any other master.

References

Blunt, A (1959) The Art of William Blake, Oxford UP.
Butlin, M (1981) The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, 2 vols, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 02550 7.
Damon, S Foster (2013) A Blake Dictionary, the Ideas and Symbols of William Blake, updated edn., Dartmouth College Press. ISBN 978 1 61168 443 8.
Vaughan, William (1999) William Blake, British Artists, Tate Publishing. ISBN 978 1 84976 190 1.

Passing on from the circle of gluttons, Virgil leads Dante past the great foe of Plutus, a wolf-like creature who is chided by Virgil, and so they descend to the next circle, densely populated by avaricious misers and prodigal spendthrifts.

Plutus most probably refers here to a composite of the god of wealth, thus the root of the evil in these souls in this fourth circle of Hell, and Pluto, one of the gods of the classical underworld. Either of those roles justifies Dante’s description of him as the great enemy of mankind.

As opposites, the two groups of spirits are locked against one another, each rolling great boulders around in opposition. When their rocks crash together, they turn about and push in the other direction, and so on for eternity. Among those whose sin is avarice are many clerics, including cardinals and popes.

Virgil explains the role of Fortune in all this, that neither group of sinners can ever be satisfied with the riches that she has. Thus both the avaricious and the spendthrifts curse the angelic Fortune for their own sins.

Dante is led by Virgil past a dark spring to the swamp of the River Styx, so entering the fifth circle of Hell, where other souls covered in mud are attacking one another, punching and kicking as hard as they can. These are the sinners who were overcome with anger. Also in the swamp are their opposites, the mournful and miserable, whose breath bubbles up through the muddy waters.

The two reach the foot of a high tower, on top of which two flames are lit to signal to another tower in the far distance. This brings them a ferry, this time rowed by a man who Virgil calls Phlegyas, who is to carry the pair across the Stygian waters in his boat.

Phlegyas is a character drawn from classical legend and myth, including Virgil’s Aeneid. After Apollo raped his daughter Coronis, Phlegyas flew into a fit of rage and burned the temple of Apollo at Delphi, so the god killed him and sent him to the underworld to undergo eternal torment.

As Phlegyas rows Dante and Virgil across rough water, the spirit of Filippo Argenti, an arrogant Florentine who is hated by Dante, rises out of the water and tries to capsize their boat.

Dante tells him to be off, and Virgil assists in pushing him back into the river. They see Argenti’s ghost cast among those fighting on the shore, where he is torn apart by them, to Dante’s delight.

Their boat then approaches the moated city of Dis, in the depths of Hell (circles six to nine), where Phlegyas lands them. Virgil goes forward to secure their admission, but the gate to the city is slammed shut on him.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, which were first published in 1857 and continue to be used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

Gates as a means of access through the walls of fortified cities have ancient origins, but it wasn’t until the Etruscans and the Romans that they acquired their own deity, notably in the Roman god Janus with his two faces. His association with gates, and the start and end of war, gave rise to an interesting tradition in classical Rome: the gates at each end of an open enclosure associated with the god were kept open in times of war, and closed when the city and empire was at peace. Opening the gates of the temple of Janus was therefore a mark of starting a war.

In Rubens’ Temple of Janus from 1634, those gates, here imagined to be those of a temple, are being opened to let a warrior through to battle. Above that doorway is a statue of Janus with his two faces.

In Biblical narratives, the prominent account involving gates, other than those of heaven or hell, occurs at the start of the Passion of Jesus, in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey, since celebrated by Palm Sunday. This has been depicted in two significant works in the late nineteenth century.

Gustave Doré painted several versions of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem including this preparatory sketch, in preparation for his final huge version exhibited at the Salon in 1876, measuring 6 by 10 metres.

In 1897 Jean-Léon Gérôme painted his account of The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. According to all four gospels, Jesus descended from the Mount of Olives, and as he proceeded towards Jerusalem, crowds laid their clothes on the ground to welcome his triumphal entry into the city. Aside from being one of the major events in the Passion to be shown in paintings, for Gérôme this may have had another reading. Just a few years earlier, his paintings were being welcomed by throngs at the Salon, and commanded huge sums when sold. A short time later, his work was largely ignored, and he may have seen himself as being prepared for crucifixion in public.

The gate of hell is featured in two of the major Christian literary works of the early modern period: Dante’s Divine Comedy (c 1308-1321) and John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667).

At the start of Dante’s Inferno, the ghost of Virgil leads the author to the gate of Hell. Inscribed above it is a forbidding series of lines leaving the traveller in no doubt that they’re going to a place of everlasting pain and tortured souls. This culminates in the most famous line of the whole of the Divine Comedy:
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate
traditionally translated as Abandon hope all ye who enter here, but perhaps more faithfully as Leave behind all hope, you who enter, and is seen written in William Blake’s own hand below.

It’s also William Blake who depicts Satan at the gates of hell in his paintings to accompany the second book of Milton’s epic.

Two versions, that from the Thomas set above, and below that from the Butts set, show Satan at the gate of hell, on his way out and heading for heaven.

Although the phrase pearly gates, derived from a description of the gate to heaven in the book of Revelation, has been in common use, few if any paintings have depicted them literally. However, in paintings of secular life they can have symbolic significance.

James Tissot painted The Farewells soon after his flight to London in the summer of 1871. This couple, separated by the iron rails of a closed gate, are in late eighteenth century dress. The man stares intently at the woman, his gloved left hand resting on the spikes along the top of the gate, and his ungloved right hand grasps her left. She plays idly with her clothing with her other hand, and looks down, towards their hands.

Reading her clothing, she is plainly dressed, implying she was a governess, perhaps. A pair of scissors suspended by string on her left side would fit with that, and they’re also symbols of the parting taking place. This is reinforced by the autumn season, and dead leaves at the lower edge of the canvas. However, there is some hope if the floral symbols are accurate: ivy in the lower left is indicative of fidelity and marriage, while holly at the right invokes hope and passion.

Edmund Blair Leighton’s Regency scene of The Elopement from 1893, shows a woman leaving home to run away with her lover, the oarsman in the boat. She closes the gate on her old life as she looks back and reflects, before boarding the boat in which she will start the journey of her new life.

In the long-distant past, our ancestors discovered that processing some natural products created glues. The raw materials either came from boiling animal bones, hide, and other offal, or from natural exudates of plants, and these came to be used as the binder for paints. Being ancient in origin, different combinations of binder, pigment, and other substances developed, and those have left a confusion of terms, including glue tempera, and distemper. These represent a spectrum of paints, ranging from those using only glue and pigment, to others also incorporating substantial amounts of powdered chalk or lime to increase their opacity, and related to whitewash.

Glue tempera was used in antiquity, and outside Europe remains in widespread use. It has several disadvantages for the painter, including:

• ‘Drying light’; as the paint dries, so it undergoes marked colour change, reducing the intensity of chroma.
• Mechanical fragility of the paint layer, which is particularly susceptible to abrasion and/or cracking.
• Solution on re-wetting, so that glue tempera can easily be reworked like watercolour, but is unsuitable for exposure to water or damp. Hardening of the glue binder isn’t the result of a stable polymerisation as with oil paints, and can readily be reversed.
• Relatively poor protection of light-sensitive pigments, resulting in some fading over time.

Taken together these mean that what we see in glue tempera paintings today is often quite different from how they looked at the time they were painted.

In the early Renaissance, some artists used glue tempera extensively and with great success, although surviving works haven’t aged as well as those painted using egg tempera or oils.

Dieric Bouts’ The Entombment from about 1450 was painted using glue tempera on linen. As it’s now well over half a millennium old its colours have faded, but it remains worth seeking out when you next visit The National Gallery in London.

In the south of Europe, Andrea Mantegna was one of its great exponents, as shown in his marvellous glue tempera and gold painting of A Sibyl and a Prophet from about 1495. Because this is monochrome and uses gold as the pigment, this has neither changed colour nor faded.

Some artists, such as Joris Hoefnagel, continued to use these ancient techniques, as shown in this painting of Diana and Actaeon from 1597. This is finely executed in glue tempera and gold on vellum, and its colours have survived well.

With the widespread adoption of oil paint, glue tempera almost disappeared until it was revived at the end of the eighteenth century by William Blake.

Blake painted a series of major works in what he termed tempera, using glue as their binder. This Adoration of the Kings from 1799 shows the dulling of colour and fine cracking from his use of stretched canvas as its support.

Some of Blake’s glue tempera paintings have survived in better condition: The Christ Child Asleep on the Cross, or Our Lady Adoring the Infant Jesus Asleep on the Cross from 1799-1800 has fared better, retaining more of its original colour.

Paintings such as Blake’s Virgin and Child in Egypt from 1810 show the fine modelling he was able to achieve in its figures. Overall, though, the condition of his glue tempera paintings isn’t good. It has been suggested that some of their variation is attributable to different sources of glue, clearly of major importance. For a long time, glues provided for this and similar purposes in painting have been referred to as rabbit skin glue, but in reality the great majority have been derived from a wide range of animal products, often in uncontrolled conditions.

After Blake, the medium fell back into obscurity until later in the nineteenth century, when it was revived by movements attempting to return to techniques of the past, most prominently the Nabis in France.

Pierre Bonnard used glue tempera early in his career, when painting this exquisite three-panelled Japoniste screen of The Stork and Four Frogs in about 1889, as the Nabis were forming. Using more modern pigments, Bonnard has achieved high chroma, comparable to anything in oils, and quite unlike traditional glue tempera.

Odilon Redon experimented with glue tempera in his painting of Buddha from 1904.

Édouard Vuillard used glue tempera in many of his paintings both during his Nabi period and later, for example in this view Under the Trees of the Red House from about 1905.

Vuillard’s At The Pavillons in Cricqueboeuf. In Front of the House, from 1911, shows how effective the medium can be.

Vuillard continued to use glue tempera in his late realist paintings, such as Morning Concert, Place Vintimille from 1937-38, showing a trio of friends playing for the artist in his Paris apartment.

Glue tempera remains in use today by a very few artists, who at least have a wider range of lightfast pigments to choose from, and more consistent formulations of glue to act as binder.

After hearing Francesca’s story in the Second Circle of Hell, for those guilty of the sin of lust, Dante weeps for her and faints. When he comes to, he realises that he has already descended to the Third Circle, where it’s pouring with rain, with snow and huge hailstones falling down in sheets. This soaks the ground, turning it into stinking mud.

He sees Cerberus, the fearsome three-headed canine monster that guards this circle, also soaked by the unceasing rain.

Agostino Carracci’s portrait of Pluto from 1592 shows Cerberus alongside his master, and the god holding the key to his kingdom.

Its heads bare their fangs at Dante, but his guide Virgil scoops up three handfuls of mud and throws them into the mouths of Cerberus to assuage its hunger.

Dante and Virgil walk on the flat plain among the prostrate forms of the gluttons. One of them sits up and accosts Dante, reminding him that they knew one another. He is Ciacco (a nickname, literally ‘Hoggio’), who tells Dante of his suffering there, and the names of five other Florentines of noble rank who are to be found in the lower circles of Hell.

Ciacco then falls flat on his face in the stinking mud to await the Final Judgement.

As Virgil leads Dante down to the next circle, they talk of what will happen when the Apocalypse comes, until they reach the dreaded figure of Plutus.

Cerberus is a good example of the redeployment of pre-Christian mythology into Christian beliefs: it was originally the guardian of the Underworld, as depicted by Carracci, and prevented those within from escaping back to the earthly world. It even features in the twelve labours of Hercules, in which he captured Cerberus. With Virgil’s explicit involvement, Dante here incorporates it into his Christian concepts of the afterlife.

The artists

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593) was a highly original and individualistic Italian painter now best known for his portraits consisting of assemblies of fruit, vegetables and other objects to form human images. He also painted more conventional works which are largely forgotten today, and was court painter to the Habsburgs in Vienna and Prague. You can see some of his portraits in this article.

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) was one of the Carracci trio, the others being his brother Annibale and cousin Ludovico, who were largely responsible for the reputation of the School of Bologna in Italy. After working as an engraver, he painted a series of major frescos showing the story of Jason and Medea, and the early history of Rome.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still in use. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.

John Flaxman (1755–1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman who occasionally painted. When he was in Rome between 1787-91, he produced drawings for book illustrations, including a set of 111 for an edition of The Divine Comedy. In 1810, he was appointed the Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy in London, and in 1817 made drawings to illustrate Hesiod, which were engraved by William Blake.

Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian landscape painter, who worked mainly in Neoclassical style. During his second stay in Rome, he was commissioned to paint frescos in the Villa Massimi on the walls of the Dante Room there, which remain one of the most florid visual accounts of Dante’s Inferno. He completed those between 1824-29.

Philippe Semeria is a young contemporary artist who is an enthusiast for comics and is an aspiring illustrator.

Jan van der Straet, also commonly known by his Italianised name of Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), was a painter who started his career in Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, but moved to Florence in 1550, where he worked for the remainder of his life. Mannerist in style, he worked with printmakers in Antwerp to produce collections of prints, including an extensive set for The Divine Comedy.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.

In the First Circle of Hell, Dante and his guide Virgil saw the souls caught in Limbo. From there they descend to the Second Circle, where they find those guilty of the sin of lust. They pass the figure of Minos, who extracts a confession from every sinner as they begin their descent, and directs them onward to the appropriate circle for their sins.

Here the light is dim, and there is an eternal storm blowing those in this circle, ensuring they never obtain any comfort or relief from its incessant blast. The first of those described by Virgil to Dante is Semiramis, who married her father and made such incestuous relationships legal. (This is now known to be a false legend recorded by Orosius, popular in Dante’s time.)

Then they see Cleopatra, Achilles, Paris and Tristan. Dante tells the story of Francesca in most detail, and possibly for the first time in literature. She appears, blown in the wind, with her lover Paolo, but it’s Francesca who speaks to Dante.

Francesca da Rimini was the aunt of Dante’s host when he lived his later years in Ravenna. In about 1275, she married Gianciotto of the ruling family in Rimini, for political reasons. There’s strong suspicion that she had been tricked into this: her husband turned out to be disfigured and uncouth, but pre-nuptial negotiations were conducted by his handsome and eloquent brother Paolo, suggesting she was duped.

Soon after the marriage, Paolo and Francesca became lovers, apparently inspired by the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. Gianciotto suspected the couple, and one day caught them together in his wife’s bedroom.

Paolo had become stuck when trying to escape through a trapdoor. Francesca was unaware of that, and let her husband in, who then attacked his brother with his sword. But Francesca stepped in between them to save her lover and was killed; Gianciotto then killed his brother, and after his own death had descended further into Hell for that double murder.

Dante’s story has inspired a succession of masterly paintings.

It was William Blake’s Whirlwind of Lovers that transformed these depictions.

This story is told in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s watercolour triptych: at the left, the lovers are reading the legend of Lancelot and Guinevere. In the centre are Dante and Virgil, and at the right Paolo and Francesca are being blown in the storms of the Second Circle of Hell.

Dante faints at the tragic story that Francesca has told him, and collapses as if dead.

The artists

William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) was an Italian painter and sculptor whose tragically short career was a major influence over the development of Futurism. Drafted into the Italian Army during the First World War, he was thrown from his horse and trampled to death when he was only thirty-three.

Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) was a major French painter of history in an academic style, and a precocious artist. He won the Prix de Rome in 1845, and was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1864, teaching many successful pupils including Jules Bastien-Lepage. This article summarises his career and work.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still being used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso, and this painting was highly praised when shown at the Paris Salon in 1863. This article looks at his paintings.

Giuseppe Frascheri (1809–1886) was an Italian painter in fresco and oils who has been almost completely forgotten.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) was a major French painter in Neoclassical style, best known for his history and other narrative paintings. He was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, and continued much in his tradition, and in opposition to the more Romantic painting of Eugène Delacroix. His work extended from portraits to Orientalism.

Gaetano Previati (1852–1920) was an Italian painter who worked mainly in Divisionist style, but is now known for his Symbolism. He was most famous in the period 1880-1920, during which he was involved in the Venice Biennale and exhibitions in Italy and Paris.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was of Italian descent but born in London. In 1848, he co-founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was a major figure in British painting until his early death in 1882. A published poet and author himself, many of his paintings were in response to literature, particularly the poems of John Keats. He had a succession of relationships with his models and muses, including Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, and William Morris’s wife Jane. The triptych shown here is the earliest of at least three paintings of his showing Paolo and Francesca, another similar triptych being from 1862.

Ary Scheffer (1795–1858) was a major narrative painter of the first half of the nineteenth century, born in the Netherlands but trained and working in Paris. Among his favourite literary themes were Goethe’s Faust, and the story of Paolo and Francesca. This article looks at his narrative work.

George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was a major British painter and sculptor in the middle and late nineteenth century who was associated with several artistic circles and movements including the Pre-Raphaelites, but who worked independently in more Symbolist style. This article looks at his career and paintings.

References

Wikipedia
Danteworlds

Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.