Divine Comedy of Dante is the greatest monument of Italian literature, real medieval scientific encyclopedia of political, philosophical, moral and theological knowledge. This is allegorical description of the human soul with its vices, passions, joys and virtues. This is live human characters and vivid psychological situations. According to Virgil, Dante will have to learn in “Hell” not in words but in reality all human evil, fallen away from God, and to see the futility of earthly grandeur and ambition (Heather et al., 2005). For this poet shows in the Divine Comedy underground kingdom, where he connects everything he knows from mythology, history and his own experience of the violation by human of moral law. Dante fills this realm with people never seek to achieve by work and struggle pure and spiritual life, and divides them into circles, showing by their relative distance from each other different degrees of sin. These circles of Hell, as he himself says in the eleventh song, represent the moral teaching (ethics) of Aristotle on human deviation from the divine law (Heather et al., 2005). Already for seven centuries, an immortal work of the great Dante inspired poets, painters and composers to create numerous works of art. Among the interpretations of the Comedy illustrating takes perhaps the first place. From the first decades of Trecento until the last decades of the Quattrocento, it has developed into a strong tradition. Illustration, associated with reading and perception of Comedy most directly and closely, contains the most comprehensive evidence of how Dante poem was refracted in the representations of the Renaissance artist and Renaissance reader.
The starting point of the interpretation of the Divine Comedy by Dante in the visual arts is often considered the Renaissance in Italy. Interpretations of this period attract professionals and amateurs by the famous names and monuments, such as Botticelli with his finest line drawings of all three canticles.
An absolute masterpiece of illustrating the Divine Comedy are namely paintings by Sandro Botticelli, executed by a metal pin and a pen at the end of the Quattrocento (1492-1498, Engraving office, Berlin, Library, Vatican City) (Kenneth, 1976). Plot outline in them is deployed in such detail that it seems that the master “reads” the text line by line. As a result, space-iconic poem plan occurs with extraordinary expressiveness. Through movement of the characters from one sheet to another, connecting pieces of the path, as if having a uniform internal measure, create the impression of the architectural integrity of the afterlife worlds. Botticelli also perfectly conveys the spectacles that open to Dante and Virgil in their afterlife journey, and as a means of such profound interpretation is all-powerful expression of lines - the special gift of the artist. In the depths and freedom of the approach the most amazing are illustrations of the third Canticle. Story of songs is guessed in them as a hidden underlying cause, but the master brings here his graphic language to the highest laconism, concentrating the content of the “Paradise” in the infinite variation of figures of Dante and Beatrice, enclosed in a circle of Heaven - in their expressive linear relationship, the variability of movement and facial expressions so that the visual borders in him with suggestion of actually poetic images.
It should be noted that under the influence of social upheaval the art of Botticelli became intense-dramatic. Botticelli partly falls under the influence of mystical sermons of Savonarola, in his art moralistic notes, drama and religious exaltation appear. The sharp contrasts of the bright spots of color, the inner tensions of the drawing, dynamics and expression of images show the crisis of artist's perception of the world (Kenneth, 1976). Still pictures of Botticelli to the Divine Comedy in acute emotional expressiveness retain the ease and clarity of the images.
One of the most famous works of Alessandro Botticelli was written by the author at the peak of fame in 1480. The picture has a full name, namely “The Abyss of Hell” (Kenneth, 1976). Painting is a kind of map of hell. The artist, in his work on the creation, accurately follows description of the place in the Divine Comedy. Dante with poetic precision reflected the kind of hell topography, and described the suffering and sins of its inhabitants. Following the description of the poet, 9 circles constitute hell. Acheron River runs along the perimeter of the first round, the tributaries of the river flow into the swamp of Stygia, which is located on the fifth lap, where people are being punished for excessive anger. Following the ninth circle where the traitors are serving the punishment, the river flows to the center of the earth in the form of a waterfall, and turns to ice.
According to the description of Dante, more remote is a circle, it is narrower and then more terrible is sin done by man. According to the author of Divine Comedy, the most terrible punishment is imposed to a man for betraying in the 9th circle of hell (Heather et al., 2005). Botticelli wholly followed the description of the poet, and depicted the hell in the form of a funnel, converging toward the center of the earth, where Lucifer carries his imprisonment. The painting bears an allegorical character, and on the right is considered a world masterpiece.
Of interest is drawing to 18 Songs of Hell. The main characters, Dante and Virgil, are depicted here a few times, as if traveling on the edge of the infernal abyss. They stand out for their vibrantly shining garments. Following in the gorge Hell, they first see the demons tormented the souls of pimps and seducers, and then the stoolies and prostitutes, who are doomed to suffer cast into the dirt.
Innovation in Botticelli’ illustrations is combined with the medieval tradition of interpretation of the text. Following explanatory trends, patterns are deploying continuous string of literal content, which was based on earlier allegorical commenting of the poem. But at the same traditional elements are so modified by the artist that they enabled broad displaying of visual-spatial motives of the Comedy.
Based on the cyclic type of image (possibly from its option to Quattrocento Cassoni), Botticelli originally reproduces the leading motive of action, following step by step for Dante and Virgil in their journey. Poets’ way, the complex, direct, continuously stretches from drawing to drawing. With the visual illusion of movement, they move from one sheet to another as if it were a single composition. And this through rhythm of the movement, as well as interconnectivity of patterns of the compositions - list includes the image of the previous and subsequent torment belt, reaches in Botticelli absolute novelty of experience.
There is the idea of a specific Renaissance sense by the painter of Dante spatial categories. Figures are deprived mathematically grounded perspective constructions - spatial trends are expressed in them in different way. The three-dimensional image is reproduced by connecting several plans and figures given in-aligned-spatial position. The artist responds to the spatial impulses, contained in the Comedy. With a bold imagination he interprets the scene of the rapid rhythm. Such are an angel walking across the Styx ( “Hell” IX); breakthrough in the depth created by the figure of a galloping centaur ( “Hell” XIII); flying demons ( “Hell” XXI, XXII). Introducing the different positions of characters (e.g., treatment of gesture, figures turn), the master implies their relation to the visual remoteness of the objects in space. And if the path, as in the Comedy, is “measured” by movement of poets, following to the medieval principle of space development through movement, then at the same time it is the way, which seemed to contain a uniform internal measure, defined by to the Renaissance notion of integrity. It is because in its unity drawings suggest a certain image of the underworld, where each circle is thought of as part of a space associated with the prior and subsequent stages, and which has its own length.
Botticelli comes from the idea of the form and the measurability of Dante's universe. Introducing the idea of spatial integrity of the way, on flexible continuity of action unfolding in this space (the movement of poets), he modifies the type of illustration-commentary (Kenneth, 1976). And this illustration is now sharply penetrates the narrative pictorial cloth of the Comedy, with which embodiment of its visual images is organically connected.
In his acute and finest sensitivity he conveys images of abundant imagination. The line is easy to flow down, scattered in small swell, develops in the rhythm of sharp edges, elastically vibrates, is going to fancy ornamental plexus or floating in its weightlessness. Following these volatile rhythms on the surface of the sheet, from page to page, look penetrates the situations of different emotional shades, covers them in the growth and relationships. Comparison of graphic compositions of Botticelli with those, where coloring (obviously made with the other hand) has simplified contours, shows how the visual expressivity of illustrations owes line - infinitely mobile, responsively corresponding to the inner structure of images. A new shade of graphic interpretation of Botticelli is also obvious when compared with earlier figures to the Comedy. Unlike they, the language in which this artist “translates” pictures of Dante is unique. The expressiveness of it is incomparably diverse and opened to the transmission of originally perceived images of the Comedy in their countless sequences. Iconic component coupled with the finest expression, is essential here.
Works Cited
Heather, James et al. (Ed.). The Norton Anthology of Western Literature, Volume 1 8th Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. Print.
Kenneth, Clark. The Drawings by Sandro Botticelli for Dante's Divine Comedy. HarperCollins Publishers, 1976. Print.
