1-156-024 - Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images

Dante and Virgil looking down upon souls in torment in the inferno, 1863. Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was a great admirer of Virgil, and in his Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), Virgil accompanies Dante through Purgatory and Inferno. From Inferno, first part of Divina Commedia. Canto XIV: third compartment of the seventh circle where three kinds of violence punished; against God, against Nature and against Art. 'Unceasing was the play of wretched hands,/ Now this, now that way glancing to shake off/The heat, still falling fresh'. From an edition illustrated by Gustave Dore.