I have looked at this drawing many times. It's pretty intense, right? It is impossible for us, with the bombardment of images that assault our eyes, to understand the visual power of Dante's writing. I have seen first hand how the architecture that Dante describes affects even those who grew up with a playstation and ipod in hand. Imagine what it must have been like for Botticelli in renaissance Florence. I would imagine he spent many a night terrified of Dante's work. But really look at what Boticelli has created here. This is one powerful image, with Lucifer front and center, devouring Judas while gripping Brutus and Cassius in hand, perpetually in agony for their respective treacheries. The souls surrounding the focal point of the image are literally crawling on top of each other. Each figure is lush in brutal detail, and Botticelli has done an outstanding job of capturing the organized chaos of Dante's narrative. The figures seem ready to explode off of the page. The sense of claustrophobia exudes off the page. It is rare indeed to witness a work of art that comes close to capturing the spirit of the original work it was inspired, but this piece...If one never read a page of the Inferno and saw this, I would have to believe that they would feel the Inferno.
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