"Hell" Botticelli - painting-illustration to the "Divine Comedy"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Alessandro Botticelli is one of Italy's greatest artists. Most people remember him as a representative of the Early Renaissance, famous for his light canvases depicting young men and women of heavenly beauty. However, he also had gloomy paintings on religious themes. He was interested in the most terrible story in Christian theology - Hell. Botticelli, whose painting on the subject is now in the Vatican Library in Rome, finished it in 1480.

Its full name is Abyss of Hell. It was created by the artist as an illustration for the "Divine Comedy" of his great compatriot.

"Hell" Botticelli - painting-illustration of Dante

Giorgio Vasari, who gives us a lot of information about the biography of various artists, writes about the period in which the painter became interested in such topics, the following. Alessandro is verybecame famous for his works, and was invited by the Pope to Rome. There he earned a lot of money, but having a habit of a cheerful and carefree life, he spent almost all of it and was forced to return home. In this regard, the artist was filled with thoughtfulness and began to get involved in reading Dante. He made several drawings illustrating the latter's great work, The Divine Comedy.

At this time, he did not work for money, and thus became even more impoverished. "Hell" Botticelli illustrated along with other parts of this work - "Paradise" and "Purgatory". Approximately this is how you can characterize the history of the creation of this picture.

Botticelli's painting "Hell" - a kind of "map of the area"

It is known that the artist is the author of several paintings based on the famous work of a harsh Florentine. However, it is this colored drawing on parchment that is known more than others, because it is a kind of “hell map”. After all, Dante in his book described not only the sins and terrible torments to which those who committed them were condemned. He created a kind of topography of Hell. According to the poet, the underworld consists of eight circles, and the underground river Acheron flows along the perimeter of the first of them. Streams flow from it, falling into the fifth circle - the swamps of Stygia, where angry people are punished. Then it turns into the bloody river Phlegeton, and in the ninth circle - with traitors - it falls like a waterfall into the center of the earth and freezes. This icy abyss is called Cocytus. This is what Hell looks like. Botticelli, whose painting is actuallyis a map of Dante's underworld, trying to follow the poet's word exactly.

The circles of Hell described by the Florentine visionary are shrinking. Therefore, his underworld is a kind of funnel, placed on the tip. It rests on the center of the earth, where Lucifer is imprisoned. As the author says, the deeper hell, the narrower the circle, the more terrible the created sin. The most terrible criminals, according to Dante, are traitors. The artist depicts in some detail and carefully all the places listed by the poet where sinners languish and suffer. Other drawings, like the iconography of earlier times, show how Virgil and

Dante visits one or the other circle, and all of them, listed in the poem, stop.

Modern art and artwork

Interestingly, this map, created by a painter, became quite popular in the twentieth century. For example, the famous novelist Dan Brown, author of the acclaimed The Da Vinci Code, wrote another bestseller, Inferno (Hell). Botticelli, whose picture appears in this book as a kind of cipher, is made with the light hand of the author, a prophet. Like, in his "map" there is a way to "implement" a certain modified version of the underworld here and now. However, this novel, despite all its fantasticness, made many admirers of Brown carefully examine the drawing of the great Botticelli.