Botticelli's drawings illustrating the Songs of Hell from Dante's Divine Comedy, filled with small, darting figures of sinners, are full of an alarming confusion of lines; some of them, where the motif of a grand staircase-arch, connecting the circles of hell, is repeated, there is a genuine severe grandeur.
The color sheets for the Tenth and Eighteenth Cantos give an idea of how Botticelli intended the whole cycle of illustrations. The main characters - Dante and Virgil - attract attention with bright robes against a faded background.
Traveling through the sixth circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil end up in the city of Dit. There are stone tombs in which fire burns. Sinners, followers of the teachings of Epicurus, who do not believe in an afterlife, are punished there.
Everywhere you look - all the view of the old tomb, -
So there were graves everywhere,
Tormenting the dead with the bitterest punishment;
A stubborn flame lit latently,
Burned in these pits, heating them up like that,
How to heat iron would be difficult.
In open coffins and in open crayfish
Tormented breasts moaned bitterly
Outcasts - to know, pitiful was their sight *.
"Divine Comedy" Dante "Hell" Canto IX, verses 115-123.
While traveling through the eighth circle of hell, they encounter the souls of sinners, tormented by demons for various sins. The souls of deceivers, panders and seducers moving in rows are subjected to cruel scourging, the souls of hypocrites and harlots are immersed in a ditch with sewage.
Naked sinners walk in rows:
Some hurry to meet us in alarm,
And in step with us - but a wider step - others,
Like the Romans, who are many in number,
In the year of the anniversary crush, avoiding
The bridge was divided into two roads:
One column stretched, walking
In the direction of the castle, to the church of St. Peter,
And towards her, uphill, another one was walking.
Here and there in the depths of the harsh
Demons with horns brutally scourged
Sinful backs of the naked people.
"Divine Comedy" Dante "Hell" Canto XVIII, verses 25-36.
The drawing for Canto Thirty-one depicts ancient giants in rebellion against the gods. As punishment, they were chained in a gloomy well. Giants symbolize the brute force of nature.
Among them is the builder of the Tower of Babel, King Nimrod, blowing a horn suspended from his neck. Giant Elphiat, tightly entwined with five turns of chain, starting from the neck so that the right hand is pressed to the body from behind, and the left - in front. Antaeus, the only one free from the chains, carries Dante and Virgil to the next, ninth circle.
Illustrating the thirty-fourth, final Song of Hell, Botticelli depicts in the last circle of hell, named Giudecca, the three-headed Lucifer, with wings like a bat. In the teeth of the three heads of the prince of darkness are the three greatest sinners-traitors - Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Caesar, and Judas, who betrayed Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The prince of darkness, over whom all Hell is heaped,
He lifted half his chest of ice;
And a giant, more like me,
Than in his hand (for you to count,
What is he in full growth, and the power of vision,
Appeared to us, fully comprehended).
Anciently beautiful, today is disgust itself,
He raised his arrogant gaze at his Creator -
He is the embodiment of all vices and evil!
And it was necessary to look so vile -
His head was equipped with three faces!
The first above the chest, red, savage;
And on the sides there are two, the place of their junction
Over the shoulders; a brutal look
Every face looked around wildly.
The first one seemed to be yellow and white,
And the left one is like those who lived a long time
Near the falls of the Nile, - blackened.
Under each is a pair of the broadest wings,
How befits a bird so mighty;
Goldfinches never matured with such a sail.
Without feathers, like a bat mouse;
He rotated them, and three winds, blowing,
They flew, each in a viscous stream;
From these jets, Cocytus was frozen, freezing.
Six eyes sobbed; three mouths through the lips
Saliva oozed, turning pink with blood.
And here, and here, and there teeth were tormented
By the sinner; there are only three of them,
And they endure torment.
“Having finished and opened the part of the painting entrusted to him, he immediately returned to Florence, where, being a thoughtful person, he partially illustrated Dante, making drawings for Hell, and published it in print, which he spent a lot of time ...”
In the 90s, another significant work of Botticelli appeared - his illustrations for the Divine Comedy by Dante, to which he went throughout his life. It is assumed that the artist also wrote comments on this work, which had a great influence on the culture of late humanism.
The artist did not bypass his attention and the author of the "Divine Comedy". The portrait of Dante conveys calmness, confidence, steadfastness. His profile is as if carved on a commemorative medal. A firm, focused gaze is directed forward. The poet seems to peer into those invisible spheres, beyond the limits of our vain existence, about which he wrote so penetratingly and talentedly. The laurel wreath crowning Dante's head symbolizes his poetic glory, the bright but simple red robe is associated with monastic vestments, emphasizes Dante's modesty. From under the red cap, the edge of the snow-white cap stands out brightly, with untied ribbons, which symbolizes moral purity, and, possibly, Dante's self-irony. Like some other portraits, Botticelli depicted Dante's profile on a plain background, without landscape or interior excesses, so as not to distract attention from the main character.
The only large graphic cycle by Botticelli, illustrations for the Divine Comedy, as well as preparatory drawings, striking with spiritualized quivering lines, brilliant virtuosity, are very few.
Drawings for the "Divine Comedy" do not always find an appropriate assessment. Historians usually point out that Dante's fantasy was alien to the very essence of Botticelli's work. But the best sheets amaze with their originality and brightness of figurative sound. Unfortunately, these drawings were never completed by the master. It is believed that he planned to create color illustrations, but only 4 of the surviving 93 sheets (9 were lost) are in color. Currently, the drawings are kept in the collections of the Saatlich Museum in Berlin and the Vatican Library.
The grandiose world of "Comedy" (as Dante himself called his work, the epithet "divine" was established after him later) with its nature, history, man, moral system was perceived through the prism of the idea of the passions and movements of the soul. In this peculiar interpretation, Hell was understood as an internal state of a vicious soul that experiences not physical, but “imaginary” torments of disharmony, depression, and nightmares. The landscape and figures depicted by Dante were given the meaning of an illusion that arises in the depths of human consciousness. Botticelli twice turned to illustrating the Comedy. In 1481, according to the drawings of Botticelli, engravings were made for her printing edition. In the 1490s, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco Medici commissioned Sandro to draw on parchment to accompany the text of the poem.
The meaning of the "Comedy" is intertwined with the Neoplatonic idea of the higher world of the manifestation of supersensible beauty, where the soul, free from bodily captivity, rises through the contemplation of the steps of the divine emanation to the primordial and final Unity. Dante wrote 14,000 verses describing his fictional journey to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. The epic is divided into 100 songs: 34 are for Hell, 33 for Purgatory and Paradise. First, Dante travels through the afterlife with the poet Virgil, accompanied in Paradise by his muse, Beatrice.
I wish you well, and I wait,
If you follow me to the good path,
And I will take you to eternal places,
Hear the sorrow of despair evil,
You will see all the centuries of the sufferers of the dead,
Where in vain they call the second death;
According to this and those who, filth wash away sins
Hoping that the fire is already a consolation
Found, and await crowns over time;
But to the saints to ascend to the village,
There is a soul worthy of me:
I will return you to her protection.
"Divine Comedy" Dante "Hell" Canto One, verses 112-123.
During his journey, Dante encounters many people - both unknown and well-known faces of the past and his time. They all got what they deserved.
Sandro Botticelli always seemed to me a very subtle and gentle artist and an unprotected, unadapted person. Maybe that’s how he was… But recently new details about his life and work have been revealed to me, and my opinion about him has not only changed, but enriched. It turns out that there is some kind of secret - not a secret, but in any case, unexpected and surprising things that can excite and intrigue ... So, which paintings are the most symbolic for the artist and who was the model for the main characters of Sandro Botticelli - today we are talking about this.
Botticelli, Birth of Venus
I don’t know how it correlates in the official interpretation: which picture is the most famous “Spring” or “The Birth of Venus”?
Birth of Venus
Both of them are beautiful, both are extremely famous. But for me, as long as I can remember, Venus Botticelli has always been the standard of femininity and beauty. I recently read Irving Stone's Pain and Joy. It is dedicated to Michelangelo, which already makes this literary work extraordinarily attractive in my eyes. But in general, this is a kind of anthology about the Renaissance, about Florence - the birthplace of a whole galaxy of brilliant masters, about outstanding representatives of the Medici dynasty. Gorgeous thing! And there I read that Sandro Botticelli's lover was a certain girl Simonetta, she also served as a prototype for most of the artist's irresistible female images.
I suspected that this was an author's fiction, a purely literary character. But no! I read it on Wikipedia - a completely historical person, a person of noble origin, who, apparently, was simply the idol of Florentine high society. She was nicknamed Simonetta the Beautiful because of her incomparable external beauty. But legends have preserved the image of Simonetta as a girl of exceptionally meek, modest and charming behavior. They say that all Florentine men were in love with her, and at the same time, she was spared the jealousy and envy of women. Does this really happen? It looks like an idealized fairy tale, but the name of Simonetta the Beautiful remained in history, although she lived only 23 years ... One way or another, it is believed that Sandro Botticelli secretly loved her all his life, depicted a young woman from memory in his paintings after her death, never he did not marry and had no children, and finally, he bequeathed to bury himself next to Simonetta ... This is such a touching and romantic story that only enhances the gentle and refined motives in the painter's work.
Botticelli, Map of Hell
And suddenly - I'm not afraid of comparison: like a bolt from the blue! - such an image of a slightly blissful artist who revels in sublime art and Platonic love has been shaken and revised! Again, from fiction, namely from Dan Brown's novel Inferno, I draw various information about Dante's Divine Comedy. And in general, as in the previous case, not only about the great poet and his famous poem, but again about the Renaissance, about Florence and its famous citizens. Describing and interpreting the meaning of the circles of Dante's hell in great detail, the author of Inferno, for greater clarity, weaves into his plot a picturesque picture with the name "Map of Hell".
And what do you think, who is the creator of this really "hellish" picture? Yes, Sandro Botticelli. I cannot believe that this singer of female beauty and exquisite magical harmony could be seduced by images of all kinds of horrors that sinners endured in hell! I again think that these are artistic liberties and assumptions that in fact such a picture did not exist. And if such a real canvas existed, then Botticelli could not have been its author. I check Wikipedia again: yes, the artist actually created a series of illustrations for The Divine Comedy at one time. And somewhere on the Internet, I find this very Map of Hell ... Well, to say - disappointed? No, not at all, rather surprised. It turns out that this is how Love, Beauty, service to the Beautiful Lady and gloomy, heavy reflections on human destinies can intertwine in a bizarre way. After all, these gloomy thoughts could not have been missing when creating a work with such a plot and title - Map of Hell.
Reading Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, a poem rich in references to 14th-century Florentine politics and medieval Catholic theology, can seem like a daunting task. Much depends on the translation and, of course, on the illustrations, maps and diagrams. They give the text figurative materiality, helping the reader to follow the bright events of the poem, as the heroes go through nine circles of hell, meeting its doomed inhabitants on each, up to Lucifer frozen into ice, gnawing Judas, Brutus and Cassius with three jaws.
The Divine Comedy, becoming one of the greatest literary works, spawned a craze for "hellish cartography." The desire to depict the "Hell" described by Dante spread against the backdrop of the popularity of cartography and the obsession of the Renaissance with proportions and measurements.
Calculations by Antonio Manetti, 1529.
The craze for mapping Hell began with Antonio Manetti, a 15th-century Florentine architect and mathematician. He diligently worked on "place, shape and size", for example, estimating the width of Limbo at about 141 kilometers.
Illustration by Antonio Manetti.
Illustration by Antonio Manetti.
However, in the scientific community there were disputes about mapping the fictional world. Thinkers asked questions: What is the circumference of Hell? How deep is it? Where is the entrance? Even Galileo Galilei got involved in the discussions. In 1588, he gave two lectures in which he examined the dimensions of Hell and eventually supported Manetti's version of Hell's topography.
Map of Hell by Botticelli.
One of the first maps of Dante's "Hell" appeared in a series of ninety illustrations by Sandro Botticelli, a compatriot poet and creator of the High Renaissance, who created his drawings in the 1480s and 90s by order of another famous Florentine, Lorenzo de Medici. Deborah Parker, professor of Italian at the University of Virginia, writes: "Botticelli's map of Hell has long been regarded as one of the most compelling visual representations... of Dante's descent with Virgil through the 'terrible valley of pain'."
Map of Hell by Michelangelo Caetani, 1855.
Dante's Hell has been visualized countless times, from purely schematic representations, as in Michelangelo Caetani's 1855 diagram, where there is little detail but a clear systematic use of color, to rich illustrative maps, as in Jacques Callot's 1612 version.
Illustrative version of the Hell map by Jacques Callot, 1612.
Even after hundreds of years of cultural change and upheaval, Hell and its horrific torture scenes continue to intrigue readers and illustrators alike. For example, below is Daniel Heald's version. His 1994 map lacks Botticelli's gilded sheen, but is another clear visual guide through the poet's afterlife.
Daniel Heald, 1994
Lindsay McCulloch, 2000
Map of Hell from a book published by Aldus Manutius at the end of the 15th century.
Map of Hell by Giovanni Stradano (Stradanus), 1587.
Abyss of Hell - Sandro Botticelli. 1480. Parchment and colored pencils. 32 x 47 cm
Sandro Botticelli is presented to modern viewers as an artist whose main motives for his works were beauty, optimism, and a life-affirming beginning. However, this is not entirely true. Botticelli was a rather mysterious and very religious person, suffice it to mention that he was fond of the gloomy sermons of Savonarola, and the execution of this reformer monk had a huge impact on the painter. Art historians know that in the work of Botticelli one can also find quite tragic, pessimistic works, one of which is a painting, or rather a drawing, “Abyss of Hell”, also called “Circles of Hell”, “Map of Hell” or succinctly “Hell”.
In 1480, Lorenzo de' Medici commissioned an illustrated manuscript with the text of Dante's popular Divine Comedy. The illustrative part was entrusted to Sandro Botticelli, and although the painter did not finish this work, even in this form it looks more than impressive. Of all the drawings, "Abyss of Hell" is the most ambitious illustration.
Dante imagined hell as a kind of cyclic form, where the whole kingdom is divided into nine circles, which, in turn, are divided into rings. Botticelli very accurately approached the text of the poem, depicting not only all the rings and circles, but also individual stops that, according to the plot of the Divine Comedy, Dante and his guide Virgil made on the way to the center of the earth.
The farther the circle, the more terrible and painful the sin. We see how every sinner suffers after death for his earthly deeds. Botticelli depicts hell as a funnel, narrowing towards the center of the earth, where Lucifer lives in prison.
1 circle - these are unbaptized babies and the Old Testament righteous, whose punishment is painless sorrow. In the 2nd circle there are voluptuaries who are tortured by a hurricane and blows against rocks. The 3rd circle is the abode of gluttons rotting in the rain, and the 4th is the miserly and embezzlers who drag weight from place to place and, colliding, have fierce disputes. In the 5th circle are the souls of the discouraged and angry, their punishment is a fight in a swamp with a bottom of the souls of the discouraged. The 6th circle met Dante with false teachers and heretics lying in red-hot graves. In the 7th circle - rapists, the 8th circle - these are the deceived and deceivers located in the cracks. And, finally, the 9th circle is a receptacle for souls who have committed the most terrible sin - betrayal. They are forever frozen in the ice up to their necks with their faces turned down.
To understand the scale and scrupulousness of Botticelli's work, the drawing should be considered very carefully, and when studying reproductions, you will have to resort to the help of a magnifying glass - and then, Dante's entire narrative will unfold before the viewer with all the accuracy and power of a poetic word.
