Charon, ferryman of the dead Dante and Virgil among the gluttons Minos, judge of the damned Beatrice visiting Virgil in Limbo Punishment of the Avaricious and the Prodigal Dante and Virgil leaving the dark wood Virgil pushes Filippo Argenti back into the River Styx Virgil confronting the devils outside the city of Dis Spendthrifts running through the wood of the suicides Dante and Virgil with Brunetto Latini Punishment of the panderers and seducers Devils confronting Dante and Virgil Alichino attacking Ciampolo Punishment of the thieves Virgil addressing the false counselors Dante and Virgil among the falsifier Virgil pointing out Ephialtes and the other giants Ugolino gnawing on the brains of the Archbishop RuggieriĬomplement the Doré-illustrated Inferno with other timeless marriages of great literature and great art: Delacroix’s rare illustrations for Goethe’s Faust, William Blake’s paintings for Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Maurice Sendak’s formative etchings for Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” Milton Glaser’s drawings for Lord Byron’s “Don Juan,” and Salvador Dalí’s paintings for Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and the essays of Montaigne.In the early 14th century, Italian poet Dante Alighieri began work on his “ Divina Commedia“, the Divine Comedy, which was comprised of three separate but interwoven tales: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. His astonishing artwork was an instant success, catalyzing his career and appearing in more than two hundred editions of Dante in the century and a half since. Unable to find a publisher who was willing to take a financial risk on the lavish folio edition he envisaged, Doré self-published it in 1861. In 1855, nearly three decades before his engravings for Poe’s “The Raven,” Doré began working on a series of etchings for Dante’s Inferno ( public library).

Dante’s poetry endures as one of our civilization’s most enchanting creations - so much so that it has inspired generations of artists to interpret and reimagine it, from William Blake’s breathtaking etchings for the Divine Comedy to Salvador Dalí’s sinister and sensual paintings for the Inferno.Īmong the most memorable and bewitching reimaginers is the celebrated French illustrator, sculptor, printmaker, and engraver Gustave Doré (January 6, 1832–January 23, 1883), who considered Dante’s work a “ chefs-d’oeuvre of literature.”

Divine comedy dore