Happy October everyone! This, in my opinion, is the absolute best time of year. Football season is in full swing and the weather is cooling down. We have apples, leaves changing and the colors of autumn emerging, mulled cider, pumpkins, and the best holiday of the entire year, Halloween. That sinister time of year based on All Hallows’ Eve, when the souls of the departed were remembered, has become an occasion to celebrate fantasy and fright. Our frightful forms of entertainment come from the likes of Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Jason, and Michael Myers. In centuries past, frightful entertainments were painted in oil on canvases and panels. The history of art is abundant in images of horror, so what better time than October to examine them? This month, Greco’s Ghosts will celebrate spooktacular October with themes of terror.
Part One: The Infernal Inferno
Hell ought to be the most terrifying place in the world. The only argument against that claim might be that no one has ever seen it and therefore has nothing to base it on. Yet there is one man who lived in the Middle Ages, who told a tale of his own journey through Hell, or Inferno, and back. The man was Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1320), the tale was the Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy.
Click image to enlarge. Gustave Doré (French), Portrait of Dante Alighieri, 1860, engraving, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London.
In this epic poem, Dante, the great father of the Italian language as many call him, travels through the three worlds of the afterlife, Inferno, or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, or Heaven. Lead by the ancient Roman poet, Virgil, Dante travels through Inferno first and maps out its horrific geography, which turns out to be divided into a number of circles, with cities and landscapes within each other, inhabited by demons and monsters whose sole purpose is to torture the sinners condemned to these whereabouts.
Click image to enlarge. Domenico di Michelino (Italian), La Divina Commedia di Dante (Dante and the Divine Comedy), 1465, fresco, dome of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence.
Before venturing through Dante’s circles of Hell, it is important to note that this was one of the very few accounts of Hell out there other than the Bible. Dante’s Divine Comedy was written sometime between about 1308 and 1320. For years and indeed centuries later, people would use Dante’s account of Hell when they wanted to picture the place. I actually haven’t read the Divine Comedy, but I am familiar enough with it and have read enough about it to know that it is highly expressive and describes its geography, inhabitants, and everything else, in intricate detail. Artists seized this example as an opportunity to make visual a place that a living soul could not know. Of course, the Divine Comedy is fiction, but perhaps some believed it not. Many probably used it as a beneficial tool in teaching faith and character. What is more, people are fascinated by fright. Why else do we watch scary movies? Why else do we slow down to look as we pass a car crash on the side of the road? Hell is the unknown, and the unknown allows room for creativity and invention, that which employs the artist. Thanks to Dante’s thoroughly descriptive tale, artists didn’t even have to invent much other than the various physical features of the Inferno’s demons. Thus, Dante’s Inferno became the tool used by many artists to convey the depths of Hell and the horrors within it. Here is what they look like:
Dante’s Map of the Inferno
Click image to enlarge. Bartolomeo Di Fruosino (Italian), Inferno from the Divine Comedy by Dante (Folio 1v), 1430-35, Manuscript (Ms. it. 74), 365 x 265 mm, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Circles of Hell descend deeper as numbers increase –
Click image to enlarge. Eugène Delacroix (French), The Barque of Dante, 1822, oil on canvas, 1.89 x 2.41m, Louvre, Paris.
The following circles from lower Hell are located within in the walls of the city called Dis:
All the way into the depths of Hell, at the very bottom of the last circle, dwells Satan, the greatest sinner of all, eternally condemned for his treachery against God.
Click image to enlarge. Hieronymus Bosch (Flemish), Hell, 1500-04, oil on panel, 86.5 x 39.5 cm, Palazzo Ducale, Venice.
Pingback: Paradise Lost Was Actually Written by a Girl | Blogistemology
Pingback: Dante’s Inferno or my Hell-licious | My Journey So Far….
Pingback: Horror in October: The Rebel Angels | Greco's Ghosts
grecosghosts.com has potential, you can make your page
go viral easily using one tricky method. Just type in google:
Irsrod’s Method To Go Viral
LikeLike