William Bouguerau's Dante and Virgil in Hell (1850)

1303 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The role of art in religion

William Bouguerau's Dante and Virgil in Hell (1850)

After viewing William Bouguerau's, Dante and Virgil in Hell, I began a quest to gain a greater understanding of the religious meaning to life, and in particular more meaning to my life. Bouguerau's powerful depiction initially left me with curiosity about Dante's Devine Comedy. I read Dante with fascination and a burning desire to learn more about Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. Like a maddening and irresistible brain teaser I puzzle over these great religions and I am left with more questions than answers. I feel that I could never obtain total knowledge of God, but I thirst for as much knowledge about "him" as could be revealed in an effort to enrich my life.

I first saw William Bouguerau's, Dante and Virgil in Hell, while doing a Google search for images to include in a hate e-mail to a former boyfriend. In studying the captivating images of two powerful men tearing themselves apart in a fight to the death, I experienced what I will call an epiphany. It is hard for me to pin point exactly how it happened. I began to think about the trouble in the Middle East. The war in Iraq, the fighting in Israel and Lebanon, the continued hostilities in Afghanistan, the bombing of the World Trade Center, caused me to think about the death, misery and suffering caused by powerful men fighting. It made no sense to me. Inextricably I was drawn to read the book written by Dante, the Devine Comedy, for which this picture was painted.

Dante Alighieri in 1306 wrote the Devine Comedy. Essentially, the book is about Dante Pilgrim who had not lived a particularly pious life. Beatrice, Dante's deceased girl friend asks the Virgin Mary to help him see the error of his ways. Mary Accepts and Dante is sent on a tour through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. In the beginning he is spiritually lost. His guide through Hell and Purgatory is Virgil (pictured above). In Hell they meet various sinners: the violent, the panderers, the simoniacs, the fortune tellers, the grafters, the hypocrites, the thieves, the evil counselors, the sowers of discord, the falsifiers, the treacherous and the gluttonous. Dante learns to despise sin. Beatrice takes him to heaven where he is introduced to God by St.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy

    202 Words  | 1 Pages

    Dante Alighieri created The Divine Comedy around the time he was exiled from Florence Italy. The Divine Comedy is made up to three books that’s called inferno, purgatory and paradise. The inferno tells the story about him entering the nine circles with a fellow poet Vigil. During the journey are many Historical, Social and Cultural Context.

    Read More

  • The Separation Of Hell In Dante's Inferno

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Dante’s Inferno hell is divided into nine “circles” of hell; the higher the number correlates to the grimmer the sin and the pain you will endure. However, I do not completely agree with Dante’s version of hell, perhaps due to the difference in time periods. In this essay I will be pointing out my concerns with Dante’s description of hell and how I would recreate hell if I were Dante.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Dante Switch Guides

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri there are two main guides who help Dante on his journey to salvation. These guides help demonstrate the consequences of sin and teach him how to overcome the temptation of it. These guides are each a crucial part in Dante’s transformation to allow him to fully grow and learn to be pure on his own.

    Read More

  • The Journey of the Inferno

    1987 Words  | 4 Pages

    Dante begins his struggle when he becomes lost in the dark forest and then later finds himself in the deep depths of hell with Virgil. “Everyman—that is, any human being—finds himself in the dark state of sin and error after having wandered from the true moral course established by God” (Rudd 10). He encounters a ghostly guy named Virgil who was the amazing Latin/Roman poet that guides him through the nine chambers of hell ba...

    Read More

  • Punishments in Dante's Inferno

    592 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dante Alighieri's The Inferno is a poem written in first person that tells a story of Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell after he strays from the rightful path. Each circle of Hell contains sinners who have committed different sins during their lifetime and are punished based on the severity of their sins. When taking into the beliefs and moral teachings of the Catholic Church into consideration, these punishments seem especially unfair and extreme.

    Read More

  • An Interpretation of Dante's Inferno through Neil Gaiman's Sandman

    1719 Words  | 4 Pages

    Dante the pilgrim wakes up in the Dark Wood of Error without knowing how he got there. He tries to get to the Mount of Joy, but cannot, as the Leopard of Malice and Fraud, the Lion of Violence and Ambition, and the She-Wolf of Incontinence guard it. He cannot get passed them, so Beatrice, Dante's love, sends Virgil, who represents Human Reason, to come to help him, for man cannot get through Hell without the aid of Human Reason. Apparently, Dante thinks that the intellect can keep one from sinning. However, Human Reason can only get man to Purgatory. Man needs Divine Love to reach Heaven.

    Read More

  • The Allegory of the Cave and Dante

    1237 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.

    Read More

  • Dante's Divine Comedy - Close Reading of Canto V of the Inferno

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    In conclusion, we can see that Dante presents the reader with a potentially life-altering chance to participate in his journey through Hell. Not only are we allowed to follow Dante's own soul-searching journey, we ourselves are pressed to examine the state of our own souls in relation to the souls in Inferno. It is not just a story to entertain us; it is a display of human decision and the perpetual impact of those decisions.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Dante's Inferno

    1248 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradise. Dante presents these principles in Inferno, where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell, the degrees of sin get progressively worse, as do the severity of punishment.

    Read More

  • Dante’s Inferno - The Evolving Relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide

    2166 Words  | 5 Pages

    In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet.  At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see man’s spiritual journey towards understanding God. While God loves man regardless of his faults, His greatest desire is to see man attain greater spirituality, in that man, already created in God’s image, may truly become divine, and in doing so, attain eternality.

    Read More

  • Divine Love In Dante's Inferno

    1273 Words  | 3 Pages

    Inferno is the first and most famous of a three part series by Dante Alighieri known as the Divine Comedy that describes his journey to God through the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise written in the early fourteenth century. Scholars spanning over nearly seven centuries have praised its beauty and complexity, unmatched by any other medieval poem. Patrick Hunt’s review, “On the Inferno,” states, “Dante’s extensive use of symbolism and prolific use of allegory— even in incredible anatomical detail—have been often plumbed as scholars have explored the gamut of his work’s classical, biblical, historical, and contemporary political significance” (9). In the story, each of the three main characters, Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, represent

    Read More

  • Dante’s, The Divine Comedy

    1012 Words  | 3 Pages

    This essay directed the reader’s attention on how Dante’s compassions changed throughout the Canto’s in the Inferno sections in The Divine Comedy with Virgil’s directions along the way to help Dante reach his new direction in his life.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis: Dante's Inferno

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dante had access to these teachings and uses them to relate to the reader in a more straightforward way of why there is delineation. In this function Aristotle is not the agent of knowing, but rather a way to relay the reasoning and rationale behind God’s judgment; in this way God is not limited by Aristotle. Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought-provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings.

    Read More

  • The Weakness of Human Nature in Dante's Inferno

    2210 Words  | 5 Pages

    Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.

    Read More

  • The Structure and Content of Dante's Inferno

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... Moreover, such belief in human reason signifies Dante's hope towards a bright society and the pursuit of God’s love as the other part of self-reflection. In conclusion, a great deal of tension and contrast between “dark” and “light” in The Inferno helps us to explore Dante’s self portrait—he fears dangerous desires and sinful darkness, but shows much courage and hope towards life since he nevertheless follows his guide Virgil to dive into horrible Hell. As shown in Canto I, such emotional reaction to dark and light symbols lays a great foundation for developing Dante’s broad and universal traits as his journey progresses.

    Read More

More about William Bouguerau's Dante and Virgil in Hell (1850)

Open Document