If you imagine hell, you think, surely, and without even knowing it, the description was made by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy, as well as the illustrations made 150 years later by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510).
This other child of Florence has not only been the champion of ideal beauty, embodied in his Venus budding, and his Allegory of spring. He left a card fantastic. A diagram full of terrible scenes. A sort of cup into a funnel reversed from all evil and harm. It is in this well giant or this volcano reverse of horrors, located according to the tale in the city of Jerusalem, as it sinks in the wake of Dante, guided by Virgil.
The drawing is one of the countless secrets and wonders of the apostolic Library of the Vatican. We discover at the time of scanning. And its nine circles, gradation of punishments according to the sins - lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, etc -appear fully. More the spaces étrécissent more pain abound. On the edge of the chalice of the demon reads the sentence as final as well-known, recovery by Rodin for its bronze Door: "You who enter, leave all hope."
Monster cannibaland Then we encounter the ancient Charon in his boat. Botticelli has depicted an old man, bearded, with hooked nose and pointed ears. A sign of anti-semitism of the Quattrocento? Follow, always dealt in miniatures colourful earthy torture inflicted under the guidance of a monster, a cannibal and a glutton. Half a millennium later, this effigy of Lucifer always gives the goosebumps.
Thus, such a Homer, describing the thousand and one ornaments of the divine shield of Achilles, Botticelli has managed the feat to fit on a sheet the 34 songs of Dante regarded as the most beautiful. This would be more to his glory. But the Black dell'inferno is only the frontispiece of a book listing, in the magnifying, each of the appalling, or melancholy details of Dante. This editorial project is the result of a command passed to the artist by the cousin of lorenzo the Magnificent (we see the contract). Botticelli has not completely honoured. He died before completing it.
Remain of this comic years 1480-1490, profoundly innovative, 91 slips through and a terribilita mind-boggling. They have been dispersed over time, while the other ten spent in the soviet Union after the war shall be deemed lost. The documentary, Hell Botticelli, completed in 2016, connects the whole, following the trace of the successive owners. Among the popes, in addition to the card there are seven pages purchased to the queen Christine of Sweden. And Berlin, in 1819, acquired the 84 that had the twelfth duke of Hamilton in his palace in scotland. A place once... heavenly.
The editorial advises that you"Spirit, are you there?": the portrait divinatory William BlakeUn Botticelli history on the market françaisSur the traces of the Inferno FlorenceSujetsSandro BotticelliDante AlighieriAucun comment there are currently no comments on this article.
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