Dante and Virgil

Dante and Virgil in Hell
Dante et Virgille en Enfer (French)
ArtistWilliam-Adolphe Bouguereau
Year1850
MediumOil on canvas
SubjectThe Divine Comedy
Dimensions281 cm × 225 cm (111 in × 89 in)
LocationMusée d'Orsay, Paris

Dante and Virgil in Hell is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, from 1850. It is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.[1]

The painting depicts a scene from Dante's Divine Comedy, which narrates a journey through Hell by Dante and his guide Virgil. In the scene the author and his guide are looking on as two damned souls are entwined in eternal combat. One of the souls is an alchemist and heretic named Capocchio. He is being bitten on the neck by the trickster Gianni Schicchi, who had used fraud to claim another man's inheritance.[1]

It was Bougereau's third and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to win the coveted Prix de Rome, even though he had submitted a work that he knew would appeal to the judges. He did however find partial success in his efforts later in the year when Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes won the consolation second prize of the year.[2][3]

References

  1. ^ a b "Musée d'Orsay: William Bouguereau Dante and Virgil". musee-orsay.fr. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  2. ^ "Dante and Virgil in Hell". Art History Project. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  3. ^ (in French) Pierre Daix, Pour une histoire culturelle de l'art moderne: de David à Cézanne, Odile Jacob, 1998 (ISBN 978-2-7381-0559-2)
  • Wikimedia Commons logo Media related to Dante et Virgile by William Bouguereau at Wikimedia Commons
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