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 richly detailed 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.
The theme of the circles of hell was already developed by artists, composers, and directors of the 20th century. Many video game lovers know that there is a game called "Dante: Inferno". And in 2010, a fantasy cartoon based on the book by D. Alighieri was even published.
9 Circles of Hell: Dante's "Divine Comedy"
The famous singer and, probably, the first science fiction writer Dante depicted the 9 circles of hell in the Divine Comedy as a huge funnel. The more serious the sin, the more people suffered from a sinful person, the deeper into the funnel of the earthly underworld King Minos will lower him, meeting the deceased on the 2nd circle. The poet Dante described the 9 circles of hell as a place where on each "floor" the souls of the dead are serving a penal servitude. The poem was written in the dark ages, when the human mind was fettered by the fear of purgatory.
Dante worked on the poem for a long time - from 1307 to 1321. That is, the poem has glorified the name of this man for more than 700 years. For literature, this is an excellent example of medieval poetry. The whole poem is written in tertsy, with a stylistic charm unprecedented for those times.
The poet describes all these circles of hell as very gloomy and cruel, as a person who lived in the era of Catholic despotism could only imagine. For a general idea, we will describe all 9 circles, as they are depicted in the original source - the poem "The Divine Comedy".
Description of the first 5 circles of hell
In limbo (circle 1), Dante "settled" poets and scientists of antiquity who were not baptized. So, in fact, their souls do not belong to either the lower world or the higher one. In this place, the human soul experiences grief, but bodily torment, writes Dante, is not here.
On the 2nd circle, the souls are already suffering. They are tormented by gusts of wind. As on earth they were restless and sought comfort in voluptuousness, and not in the spiritual world, so here they will forever be tormented by an unprecedented storm.
The next circle is the afterlife of gluttons and gourmets. They are doomed to rot in the incessant and vile rain. Next comes greed. This sin is punished by the fact that the soul of the miser is obliged to drag weights on his back forever and fight with other souls who are dragging the same bales towards him.
The last circle of less serious sins associated with intemperance and craving for material things is a circle for the souls of angry, lazy or discouraged people.
Circles of hell for the most terrible torments
The most terrible sins, according to the writer, are violence, deception, extravagance, hypocrisy and betrayal. Circle 6 is for false teachers who have turned human minds into lies for their own benefit. In all the "spaces" of the 7th tier, rapists are suffering. And circles 8 and 9 are for the most "refined" hypocrites, heretics, panders and seducers. As well as trading priests and alchemists. It is these sins that Dante condemns, and for such souls the eternal penal servitude in the 9th circle is the most terrible.
On the very last circle, in the center, there is a fallen angel frozen into the lake with the ancient name Cocytus. In his teeth, such historical figures as Judas, as well as those who betrayed Caesar, Mark Brutus and Gaius Cassius, are doomed to be tortured.
Truly terrifying and unusual describes Dante Alighieri 9 circles of hell.
Who inspired Dante?
Like every writer, Dante had his own muse. A girl named Bice (the name Beatrice was later given to her by a genius himself) inspired a talented young man only by her existence. He was so selflessly and for a long time devoted by all his thoughts to only one lady of the heart that the greatest work, like his other poetry, was written in her honor.
Many masters of the brush depicted this girl with the poet. The artist Holiday Henry painted the painting "Dante and Beatrice" (year of writing - 1883).
gjanna wrote a book review
Dante Alighieri Divine Comedy
Well, there is enmity all around, cruel executions, plague and other charms of the Middle Ages, so Dante's harsh hell, apparently, could be seen by any inhabitant of Florence, Naples or, for example, Bremen. Speaking of "see you". Surely you heard that Dante's contemporaries said: "The great poet must have seen hell with his own eyes, since he described it very vividly in all its details." Believe me, hell really breathes on the reader either with flames, or with ice, or with boiling ... er ... various liquids. Sinners cover their faces with their feet; they cry, and their tears flow down between the buttocks, because the anatomy was a little damaged from being in this glorious place; harlots, boiling in excrement, tear themselves to blood, apparently so that life does not seem like raspberries to them. You won't be bored while reading "Hell" for sure. Dante's contemporaries drew maps of his hell, interpreted his poems. By the way, in the walks of Alighieri and Virgil, who acts as a guide, sinners periodically meet, pouring predictions. I don’t know if they came true, since they are very closely tied to Dante’s contemporaries, whom, to be honest, I haven’t heard anything about. If Dante thus took revenge on his enemies who expelled him from Florence, he was a cruel guy.
So AD. In order to leave myself such a small cheat sheet-guide, I found such a scheme on the Internet. Maybe it will come in handy for someone else...
Hell Dante
You can try to find a place for yourself, for example, I am confused and will tell you about my whereabouts when I get there.
But now the cruel and colorful hell is over, and after meeting with Lucifer, chewing Brutus and Judas, we find ourselves in Purgatory, and then in Paradise. It's a pity, but paradise is not so voluminous at all and, having read the Divine Comedy to the end, I absolutely cannot remember anything bright and pleasant. For some reason, Dante believed that:
Like the shores, revolving, the firmament of the moon
Hides and reveals relentlessly
So fate has power over Florence.
So it can't sound strange
About noble Florentines my speech,
Though their memory is vague in time.
The memory of them in time is so foggy that Filippi, Ugi, Grechi for the modern reader, for the most part, are just Italian surnames and nothing more. So most of Paradise transits from the eyes into the cosmos without lingering in consciousness. And, of course, Beatrice. The girl whom Dante loved in his youth meets him in purgatory and lifts him higher and higher, to paradise. Interestingly, Dante was married, he had children, but not a single sonnet, not a single stanza of the Divine Comedy is dedicated to his wife. Beatrice is so beautiful that her bright face overshadows the delights of paradise. Oh, this idealism, when it is already impossible to be disappointed in the subject of idealization!
The Divine Comedy has been read, and now Boccaccio sparkling with humor and inventions awaits me, who, by the way, was a contemporary of Dante and these two creators, judging by their works, are so different, corresponded despite a significant difference in age.
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 richly detailed 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.
Each of the circles of Hell, counting from top to bottom, in Dante is smaller than the previous one and is separated from the next by a rocky slope. More excusable sins, stemming rather from the weakness of human nature, are punished in higher circles, and sins that are most contrary to human nature in lower ones.
But as the circles narrow more and more downward, this proves that the most inhuman, repulsive sins are committed least of all.
The structure of Hell in the description of Dante
Categories of sinners
Let us now delve into the principle that Dante adhered to in his categories of sinners. Ordinary descriptions of hell are almost entirely based on the church theory of the seven major sins and their uniform punishability, without going into much internal differences. The Scholastics, on the other hand, did not limit themselves to this and established a deeper difference.For example, Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between sins arising from passion or from malice, and declares the latter worthy of a heavier punishment than the former. Dante's principle does not exclude this scholastic principle, but, on the contrary, embraces it, but it is wider and has a non-Christian source - Aristotle. His ethics were assimilated in many particulars by the scholastics, and Dante directly calls them his own.
Following the theory of his teacher of morality, he establishes three categories of basic sins: sins due to intemperance, sensual passion, which Thomas Aquinas singles out; sins out of malice, which in him, as in Aristotle, are twofold: the sins of open violence and deceit. The goal of every evil action, says Dante, is injustice, and this goal is achieved in two ways, both through violence and through deceit.
Deception, however, is most unpleasant to God and most severely punished in Hell, since it is an evil that is most characteristic of man, and the abuse of gifts that make up his exclusive belonging, distinguish him from an animal, while the sins of violence, and everything that likens man to animals, directly distract him from any use of these gifts.
The sins of intemperance, rooted in the weakness of human nature, are threefold: crimes of the flesh, revelry, poverty and wastefulness, anger and discontent. Between the immoderates and the violent are heretics of all kinds, the Epicureans, etc., since there is a particle of both in them. Those who live by violence are divided into three divisions: those who sin against God and nature, blasphemers, sodomites and usurers. Deception is twofold: it is committed either against those who do not have confidence in the deceiver, or against those who trust him.
In the first case, only general philanthropy is violated, in the second, personal philanthropy; in the first case it is a simple deceit, in the second this sin becomes treason, the most disgusting, inhuman kind of sin. Dante lists ten types of criminals as simple deceivers: pimps and seducers, flatterers and harlots, simonists (persons who traded church positions), soothsayers, people living by bribery, hypocrites, thieves, bad advisers, violators of the peace, deceivers.
Sandro Botticelli. Map of Hell (Circles of Hell - La mappa dell inferno)
There are four kinds of betrayal: against blood relatives, the fatherland, guests, against the eternal world order of God, that is, against God and the empire.
Circles of Hell
All these sinners are distributed in the description of Dante in eight circles of Hell; the ninth circle, or rather the first, counting from top to bottom, is Limbo, something like the threshold of hell, where all unbaptized pious people took refuge, whose only crime is their ignorance of Christianity.Along with all these sinners or people deprived of the hope of salvation, Dante established another category of condemned from those who were neither ardent nor indifferent on earth, “from the average people, whose residence is on the other side of the boundary line of hell, between the front door and Acheron; they are too bad for heaven, too good for hell, and are therefore rejected here and there. Among them are those neutral angels who, during the rebellion of Lucifer, did not take the side of either God or the rebel.
This grouping of sinners invites us to consider it even more thoroughly. At first glance, it is consistent, however, with the ethics of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and Dante himself refers to them as authorities. But all the rest of the subdivision, and in particular the establishment of the characteristic differences between the Aristotelian categories, has so much peculiarity in itself that it will not be useless to analyze it. To single out people of average temperament, Dante found an indication in the Apocalypse.
The difference that falls to the pious pagans in the first circle of hell has nothing in itself that would deviate from the common belief, exactly the same can be said about the four circles of intemperate people. In the description of all these hellish circles, five deadly sins can be recognized: sensuality, gluttony, stinginess, anger and laziness, just as they were understood by the church and Christian morality.
The original and independent side of the criminal theories that reign in hell begins with the sixth round. This circle includes heretics, the seventh circle of tyrants, the eighth and ninth two kinds of deceivers. Here in Dante, indeed, traces of the views of canon and Roman law are still noticeable, but they are reduced to a minimum, thanks to the third principle - the principle of German criminal law. Canon law and Christian ethics would undoubtedly recognize heresy as a more serious sin than murder, hypocrisy and treason against relatives or the emperor.
In the same way, Roman law knows no offense more serious than that which is committed in relation to the common good and the state, and almost entirely has no other measure for a crime than the public interest. The crime against the individual is of secondary importance to him; it does not recognize treason; violence is punished by them only when it violated public peace and security. In a word, Roman criminal law does not rest on the basis of an ethical legal outlook; the Germanic, on the other hand, finds its support entirely in it.
The latter hardly cares about the state and punishes only the crimes of individuals, mostly on the basis of the moral measure of their punishability. The motive for the crime, the way it is carried out, are in the foreground for him, and the more outrageous they seem according to national concepts, the more severely they are punished.
Therefore, treason is considered the most serious crime here, since it violates the most sacred bonds, the bonds of fidelity. Thus, the most insidious and most hidden crimes were punished by the Germans most severely. Any obvious violence, which did not always even seem worthy of punishment, was punished less severely.
We encounter this Germanic view in Dante's description of Hell. Violence is less severely punished than deceit, and among the crimes based on lies, treason is the most severely punished. Therefore, among the rapists, we find all kinds of thieves and deceivers, if only their crime was accompanied by open violence: on the contrary, the murderers, who at the same time were thieves, are not among the first, but among the last.
Dante "Hell"
Illustration by Gustave Doré
These brief explanations will be enough to prove the identity of the views of the Germans and Dante. Perhaps the question will arise, was this identity accidental, or is there a deeper connection at its base? As is well known, thanks to the Lombards, German legal views at one time dominated a significant part of Italy and by no means disappeared everywhere even in the thirteenth century.
Therefore, Dante could easily get to know them. But we do not attach much importance to such an explanation; here we are talking about an internal sense of justice, which is not known, not studied externally and can only be the result of a general organization, the spiritual essence of the person himself.
Therefore, it is necessary to point out the affinity of Dante's nature with the German character, as it is found in the very legal consciousness of this people, and at the same time recall how these legal views of the poet diverged from those that dominated in contemporary Italy, especially in the environment surrounding the poet.
It is not known whether the dominant view was the product of the struggle of the parties, but it is quite certain that treason was one of the most disgusting and widespread ulcers of Italian life of that time and that it occurs in all forms and under all circumstances, nowhere accompanied by a moral consciousness of right. Based on this fact, one would like to call Dante more Germanic than Romanesque in nature.
Specialization of sins
When specializing sins of the second and third categories, Dante in his description again approaches Roman and canonical views, as, for example, when analyzing deceivers and usurers, although with respect to the latter, the definition of the essence of sin is entirely based on an independent ethical basis.
Dante "Hell"
Illustration by Gustave Doré
Various types of infernal punishments
It is interesting to consider the various types of hellish punishment. They are a continuation of the internal state of sinners on earth and proceed from the position: "What you have sinned, so you must be punished." This position was accepted by almost everyone as a guiding norm. The German “floggers” (flagellants), who appeared a little later than Dante, and who wanted to suffer for their sins while still on earth, made the principle of their self-flagellation out of this position.People of average temperament in hell suffer most of all from the consciousness of their own insignificance and their removal from people good and evil; the punishment of the unbaptized consists only in hopeless impulses, without any other torment. On the other hand, with people who are not chaste, that kind of torture begins, the distinguishing feature of which is its eternity. They are tormented by sensual desires and never reach peace. Gluttons in Dante's Hell are mired in a swamp, which, due to rain, snow and hail, constantly remains cold and sticky.
The miserly and the spendthrift, forming two choirs, in their constant movement run into each other, reproach one another for stinginess and extravagance, and then part to get back together again. Angry and dissatisfied are with Dante in the hot swamp of Styx, they fight with all their members and tear each other to pieces. Heretics lie in hell in open flaming coffins, which will be closed forever after the Last Judgment. Those who have sinned with violence against their neighbors are immersed in a hot stream of blood and are boiled in it; according to the severity of their crime, they are placed at a greater or lesser depth.
Suicides and players in the description of Dante are forever deprived of their corporeal shell and inhabit a forest full of thorny plants in hell with their souls; after the resurrection of the dead, they will bring their bodies and hang them on the branches. The tyrants who have sinned against God are smitten with an eternal fiery rain; blasphemers continue to blaspheme God and oppose him. Sodomites in Dante are constantly fleeing from the flames falling on them; usurers can hardly hold their sacks in their hands, deflecting the fire from them.
The deceivers, pimps, and seducers march in the opposite direction, driven with relentless speed by the blows of the scourge that the horned demons endow them with. Flatterers and courtesans sit in Dante's pit filled with all kinds of uncleanness. The Simonists have plunged head first into the rocks, while their feet are burning in the fire blazing from without. Soothsayers march in Dante's hell, with their faces turned back; bribed people and those who bribed them will sink into a lake of black tar.
The pretenders barely drag their feet - they are clothed in heavy monastic robes, which look like gold on the outside, but lead on the inside. Thieves steal from each other their only asset - their human form. Evil, secret advisers are invisible and hidden by the devouring flame. The perpetrators of strife, sects, etc. walk around with split bodies and disjointed limbs.
Counterfeit coiners, perverters of words, etc., slanderers and liars are tormented in hell by devils quite arbitrarily, since they themselves did not respect the law during their lifetime. Traitors, people who have sinned against the rules of common and personal love, are in an icy lake, and those who most hated each other during life are most closely pressed one to another. Below all is in Dante's description the embodied principle of evil, Lucifer, with three faces.
In one of these images, he crushes Judas, who betrayed Christ, in the other two, he is a traitor to the cause of the empire. Lucifer is the lord of hell; all evil came from him and returns to him. That is why he has three faces: one is dark, the other is red, the third is half yellow, half white.
In this circumstance, they rightly saw a contrast with the Trinity, or even a connection with the three main types of punishable sins.
Among other particulars of hell
Among other details of hell, one should especially dwell on the use of the mythological ideas of the Greeks and Romans. Dante, in his description of hell, almost entirely used them and was guided in this case by the well-known rule of medieval Christianity, which saw in them not only the creation of fantasy, but a false understanding of real truths.Therefore, in Dante's hell, pagan deities and heroes again rise in the form of demons and have the same meaning as the fallen angels turned into devils. The poet, without hesitation, displays Charon as a carrier, Minos as an infernal judge. In the same way, Dante gives mythological images as representatives to all other circles, which, moreover, already have a corresponding allegorical meaning.
The dog Cerberus is the representative of the circle of gluttons in hell; Pluto (in ancient times, the former god not only of the underworld, but also of wealth) - a circle of stingy and wasteful, Phlegius - angry. Three furies are, along with the fallen angels, the guards of this hellish city, where there are people who have sinned with violence and deceit. The Minotaur leads, in particular, people who have sinned with violence. Centaurs punish in hell those who oppressed their neighbor; harpies, as symbols of remorse, torment suicides.
Geryon has become the leader of the circle of deceivers and remains hidden, while the rest are always visible. The difference that we notice in the use that Dante makes of originally pagan and biblical demons is that in order to punish the most serious sinners, deceivers, he uses only the latter and exposes them in a much worse form than the former.
But even apart from this special example, Dante, in his description of hell, everywhere and always refers to mythology as to something real, living, and uses it with the same freedom with which he uses other historical facts and personalities.
The best and most convincing example of this attitude is the ninth canto, where Dante puts into the mouth of an angel who descended from heaven to tame demons: the myth of the descent of Hercules into the underworld.
Dante "Hell"
Illustration by Gustave Doré
Pagan representations
A similar use is made by Dante from the pagan idea of Chronos and the rivers of hell, the consideration of which can complete the picture of hell and its structure. And here we meet with the complete syncretism of pagan and biblical elements. On the island of Crete, where Saturn once ruled, there is a figure of an old man.His head is golden, his chest and arms are silver, the lower part of his stomach is made of copper, everything else is iron, except for his right leg, created from baked clay. He turned his back to Damietta in Egypt, his face to Rome. All these parts of the body, except for the head, have cracks, from which tears flow and, having united, flow into the abyss of hell. There they, according to Dante's description, form four infernal rivers, Acheron, Styx, Phlegeton and Cocytus.
Acheron is the upper limit of hell. Between him and Styx are those who have sinned intemperance. Styx separates them from the real infernal city, where heretics, deceivers and those who have sinned with violence are punished; the latter are especially surrounded by Phlegethon. Cocytus pours into the lowest space and, freezing, forms an icy lake, the seat of the traitors. This image of an old man, obviously, was arranged by Dante from the pagan myth of Chronos and from the legend of the vision of Nebuchadnezzar.
Dante makes a truly original application of all this, which once again illuminates with new light his system already familiar to us. The image of the elder in his description denotes the state, gold, silver, copper, iron correspond to the known four centuries, the clay right foot means the depravity of the current century, cracks - the growing sinfulness of modernity, tears - grief and sinfulness accumulated by mankind.
They turn in a very ingenious way into hellish rivers, washing various types of sinners or serving, like Styx and Cocytus, in fact for their punishment. The island of Crete was chosen because it serves as the cradle of Jupiter, who has always been in the eyes of Dante a symbol of justice, that is, empire.
Starets, fix your eyes on Rome, around which the whole development of history should be concentrated; it was like a mirror for him, because it reflected, even too clearly, his own disintegration.
The most heterogeneous elements
So, we see that the description of hell with everything that was contained in it was compiled by Dante from the most heterogeneous elements. We meet here with the influence of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, with the views of German, canonical and Roman law; with pagan myths and beliefs mixed with Christian ones; with the pagan underworld, partly transformed into a Christian hell - and everywhere the individuality of the poet creates quite freely within the limits of dogma.Sandro Botticelli "Map of Hell" ("Circles of Hell")
The work of Sandro Botticelli is marked not only by the life-affirming motives of "Spring". "Venus and Mars" and "The Birth of Venus", but also dark, tragic moods. Their clear example is the drawing "Map of Hell" (La mappa dell inferno).There are several famous illustrated manuscripts of Dante's Divine Comedy. Most remarkable in this respect is the splendid manuscript commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, with magnificent drawings by Sandro Botticelli. A series of drawings by Botticelli remained unfinished, but even in this form it can be recognized as the pinnacle of the art of book illustration of the Italian Quattrocento (XV century).
Botticelli's illustrations on the theme of Hell are especially striking. "Map of Hell" by Sandro Botticelli - a colored drawing on parchment depicting nine circles of the infernal abyss.
Dante described Hell as an abyss with nine circles, which, in turn, are divided into various rings. Botticelli on his "Map of Hell" presented the kingdom of sinners with such subtlety and accuracy that one can trace the individual stops that, according to the plot of the "Divine Comedy", Dante and Virgil made, descending to the center of the earth.
Below is another illustration by Sandro Botticelli for The Divine Comedy. This is a drawing for Canto 18 of Hell. The main characters, Dante and Virgil, are depicted here several times, as if traveling along the edge of an infernal abyss. They are distinguished by their quiveringly shining clothes. Following the gorges of Hell, they first see the souls of pimps and seducers tormented by demons, and then scammers and prostitutes who are doomed to suffer plunged into the mud.
Sandro Botticelli
Hell
Illustration for the "Divine Comedy" by Dante. 1480s
Here Botticelli presents Dante and his guide Virgil in the eighth circle of Hell, which consists of ten deep abysses where swindlers are punished.
Sandro Botticelli
Dante and Virgil in the eighth circle of Hell
Illustration for the "Divine Comedy" by Dante. 1480s
And here Botticelli painted the ancient giants who rebelled against the gods and were put in chains for this. They symbolize the brute force of nature, enclosed in hellish abysses.
Sandro Botticelli
Ancient Giants in Hell
Illustration for the "Divine Comedy" by Dante. 1480s
And this is an illustration for the 34th and last song of Dante's "Hell": the image of the three-headed Lucifer, who torments the three greatest sinners of mankind: Brutus and Cassius - the murderers of Julius Caesar, and Judas - the betrayer of Christ.
Sandro Botticelli
Lucifer tormenting in Hell the three greatest sinners of mankind
