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Before the show closes Sunday in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, come and see Dante's Hell and the effects of his poem, The Divine Comedy, on artists and writers which they created over several centuries.
By two years Covid delayed the opening of Going Through Hell: The Divine Dante which the Gallery had originally planned to celebrate in 2021, the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy's publication, but the disease could not stop the show.
In the painting above, the National Gallery of Art describes Dante looking across the water at small figures walking along the elevated circles of Purgatory, where souls await purification before admission to Paradise.
According to the Gallery, Dante holds in the painting a large manuscript copy of his poem opened to the 25th Canto of Paradise which focuses on his hope and longing to return to the place of his birth, Florence.
Gretchen Hirschauer, curator of Italian and Spanish paintings for the Gallery who curated the show from the Gallery's collection, sat down for an interview.
When Covid hit, "we were closed at least a year. I was very pleased when we started back to work to learn that the Gallery wanted to continue" the show which includes 20 works of art from the 15th to 20th centuries, created by artists inspired by Dante to depict compositions and scenes based on the Comedy.
The poem traces the writer's journey through Hell, Purgatory and then to Paradise, accompanied initially by the poet, Virgil, and lastly by "Beatrice" (not Dante's wife).
And probably the most gruesome illustration is detail from an illustration, below. I don't know about you, but I'm going to try and stay out of Hell. That ending looks rather unbearable and painful.
Italian 15th Century, The Inferno, after the Fresco in the Camposanto of Pisa, c. 1480/1500, engraving, National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection
Someone mentioned to Hirschauer that Dante's themes were "an evergreen topic; the whole notion of love and lost love and the journey to the afterlife, and everyone's fears and hopes for it.
"It’s timeless which is one of the reasons Dante is still so well known and popular," Hirschauer said.
"It’s always interesting when I go back and read something he wrote. He wrote this 700 yrs ago, and it sounds like a story we could have been talking about yesterday."
And indeed we are, and talking about it tomorrow and the next day and the ...
Hirschauer has read the Divine Comedy several times, in English and Italian, the latter which - surprise! - is harder than English, she said.
"He wrote this [the Comedy] after he was exiled, but we don’t really know for sure when he wrote it. He was exiled earlier on and then for life later. It took many years for him to finish it."
Dante's expressions reflect the hell and depression he endured while wandering the world suffering the losses of his greatest loves: Beatrice and Florence, the former, his lifelong idolization of the woman who captured his fancy beginning when he was nine years old, and the latter, his beloved birthplace which banished him twice, once for two years for his failure to pay a fine, and the last, for "public corruption, fraud, falsehood, fraud, malice, unfair extortion practices, illegal proceeds, pederasty ..." condemning him to death by fire if he returned!
It is possible that Beatrice was a figment of his imagination who grew more attractive to Dante over the years.
Hirschauer: It's "not a fact that they ever were lovers or spent any time together. [Beatrice was also married to someone else.] Maybe he fell in love with the ideal woman, when he was nine. I am sure he idealized her. She died young, when she was 25" leaving him "very despondent.
"He started writing this more than 10 years after she died, when he was about 35, but we don't know really when he started. It may have taken him 15 years [to write]."
He was middle-aged and experiencing a crisis in his life, Hirschauer said.
In his Nine Circles of Hell, Dante (1265-1321) ranks treachery and traitors as the worst kinds of sin, because, Dr. Hirschauer believes,"he himself was exiled from Florence.
"He was a very proud Florentine and he loved his city very much and he feels (I can’t speak for him, but) betrayed by the city he loved so much. I think that’s why he put traitors at the very bottom because of the wrong that was done to him."
(It took the City of Florence 700 years - until 2008 - to rescind Dante's sentencing of death.)
Beginning with a ceiling illuminated in red, two galleries usher visitors in to explore displays, books, maps, and statues like The Thinker (1880, 1901) by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) who was inspired by the first part of the Comedy, the Inferno which he sculpted for his The Gates of Hell, two bronze doors found now in Philadelphia and Paris at the Rodin museums.
(At the Gallery, a lifesized photograph of the doors stands behind the The Thinker who may have been modeled on Dante himself.)
Dante's themes of love, rejection, and justice are those experienced by every adult at one time or another.
Is life a comedy? My cousin sometimes wonders if Hell is life on Earth!
Come to the show and shed light on your own life and, by all means, when entering your afterlife, pass Hell, pass Purgatory and go straight to Paradise. Tell them Dante sent you.
The Divine Comedy has been translated into more than 50 languages.
What: Going Through Hell: The Divine Dante
When: Through July 16, 2023. The National Gallery hours are 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily.
Where: West Building, Main Floor, Galleries 10 and 11, National Gallery of Art, 6th and Constitution, Washington
How much: Admission is always free at the National Gallery of Art.
Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza
For more information: (202) 737-4215
Accessibility information: (202) 842-6905
patricialesli@gmail.com
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