Sandro Botticelli

We haven't looked at Sandro Botticelli's illustrations of Inferno as a class, so I searched his artworks, and they are as impressive as the ones that we have looked at thus far. Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance famous for the Birth of Venus and the Primavera. When Botticelli undertook the project of illustrating the Divine Comedy with help from Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, his commissioner, he planned to illustrate every canto. Of this project 92 parchment sheets survive, divided between the Vatican and Berlin. The images are mostly not taken beyond silverpoint drawings, many worked over in ink, but four pages are fully colored, including the Abyss of Hell (1480).

This highly detailed cross section map, which I believe is also displayed in Ms. King's room next to the picture of Beyonce, shows Dante and Virgil, who are dressed in red and purple, respectively, taking their journey through Hell. The circles get smaller as the poets go deeper into Hell until they reach Satan, who is centered in a circle, which represents the center of earth, where all weight converges.

This drawing illustrates Canto 18 (which we haven't read), part of the 8th circle of Hell, where the panderers, the seducers, and the flatterers are punished. Dante and Virgil are each shown 6 times, descending through the bolgias.

This picture shows Lucifer's geographical position in Hell. Lucifer is very hairy.

Heretics.

More than his contemporaries, Botticelli was extremely faithful to Dante's text.