Inferno

I  illustrated  characteristic stories of each of the "Inferno" cantos, using acrylic on paper. Painting formats are 36 x 48 cm.

Dante is in red, his guide and protector Vergil is blue. According to the Devine Comedy, the two received access as observers to the trans-world.

Inferno 1: While toward the lowland I was falling fast

 Inferno 2: Me a Lady called, so beautiful and happy

 Inferno 3: To take you to the other shore, into eternal darkness

Inferno 4: Honorable people held that place.

 Inferno 5: To sexual vice so wholly was  she given,

 Inferno 6: The rainfall causes them to howl like dogs

 Inferno 7: They struck each other, not with hands alone

 Inferno 8: The Wrathful and Sullen. Styx. The City of Dis

 Inferno 9: Here like with like is buried, and more hot

 Inferno 10: When I was ’neath his tomb, he looked at me

 Inferno 11: A high bank, formed in a circle by rocks

Inferno 12: Centaurs were running by, with arrows armed

 Inferno 13: So from the broken twig together issued both words and blood

  Inferno 14: “One of the seven kings was he, who Thebes besieged

  Inferno 15: But held my head bowed down, like one who walks in reverence

 Inferno 16: All three of them made of themselves a wheel

 Inferno 17: My Leader had climbed already upon the back of that fierce animal

 Inferno 18: Horned demons with great scourges I beheld, who from behind were fiercely whipping them

 Inferno 19: Out of the mouth of each a sinner’s feet protruded, and, as far as to the calf

 Inferno 20: For toward his loins his face was turned around, and backward it behooved him to advance

 Inferno 21: “Be none of you malicious! Before your grappling hooks take hold of me

 Inferno 22: They both fell down into the middle of the boiling fen 

 Inferno 23: But inside all are lead, and of such weight

 Inferno 24: Snakes, whose tail and head were thrust between their loins

 Inferno 25: And thrusting next its tail between the two, it stretched it upward all along his back

 Inferno 26: ‘Who is in the flame which comes along so cloven at the top, that from the pyre it seems to rise

 Inferno 27: Since from the body of the flame they had nor path nor mouth, the painful words were changed at first into the latter’s tongue

 Inferno 28: A trunk without a head, which moved along

 Inferno 29: Oft plied upon himself the edge of finger-nails for the great rage of itching

 Inferno 30: And one I saw, who like a lute were shaped, if he had only had his groin cut off down in the region where a man is forked

 Inferno 31: This one had in front his left arm, and behind his back his right, tied by a chain

 Inferno 32: The woeful shades were livid in the ice, as to the notes of storks they set their teeth

Inferno 33: One of the wretches of the icy crust called out to us thereat: “O souls, so cruel, that unto you the last place is assigned

Inferno 34: In each mouth, as a heckle would have done, a sinner he was crushing with his teeth