Visual Depictions In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy

The inception of Dante Alighieri's trilogy, “The Divine Comedy,” stirred thoughts and emotions in thousands of readers over the last hundreds of years. One aspect that makes this book so revered is the fact that each individual reader gains a different, and varied, interpretation of Dante’s work. Consequently, a wide spectrum of depictions, stemming from readers’ provoked feelings, now exist through artist’s visual representations of this book. A great example would be Ary Scheffer and Gustave Dore’s different depictions of Canto V of Book 1 – “The Inferno” – where Dante and Virgil meet Francesca and Paolo. Scheffer and Dore create two separate ideas and emotions felt by the viewer with their use of different artistic details such as focal points, backgrounds and coloring, and expressions. Each paints the same scene, but provoke different emotions and expressions, dependent only on the artist’s visual interpretation of Dante’s words. To begin with, Scheffer and Dore have slightly different focal points within their art pieces. For
Scheffer’s painting, Francesca and Paolo are floating front and center with emphasized illumination of the two, while Dante and Virgil are faded into the muted background of colors. Lying from corner to corner, the lovers’ bodies force the viewer’s eyes upon them all the more. This combination of light and dark, juxtaposing size and color, emanates the idea that Francesca and Paolo were clearly most significant, while Dante and Virgil were mere spectators of the lovers’ show.
Similarly, Dore brought the focus on to Francesca and Paolo, but in a less prominent manner. In Dore’s depiction, Francesca and Paolo are brightened more than the rest of his etching, but not nearly as illuminated as in Scheffer’s. Dore also placed Francesca and Paolo in the center, but much smaller and floating just outside of a crowd; losing visual importance. Furthermore, Dore positioned Dante and Virgil in the bottom front of the etching looking onto the whisking couple from atop a high cliff. Though unilluminated, the leading lines for Dore’s piece composed of the viewer seeing Dante and Virgil first, with their eyes later focusing in on Francesca and Paolo. This suggests that Dante and Virgil are more projected and generally most important; but the attention is on the particular situation of Francesca and Paolo.
Moreover, Scheffer and Dore applied a different array of backgrounds and coloring to either enhance focal points or shape the viewer's emotions. Scheffer made the decision to omit any details in the background by deciding to blend dark shades and muted colors together. This approach reinforces the idea that Francesca and Paolo are the main focus, and Dante and Virgil are eminent only through the lovers’ radiance. Additionally, the background begins with mixtures of dark reds to the left of Francesca and Paolo and switches to greenish browns to the right of them near Dante and Virgil; where the reds give the feeling that love is the only thing the couple sees, while the transfer to brown's provide that Dante and Virgil see the corruption and lust beyond the love. In general, Scheffer’s realism coloring scheme gives the painting a warmer, lively feeling, enhancing the passion seen between Francesca and Paolo.
On the flip side, Dore supplied his etching with an immense amount of background details and a cooler color scheme. Dore’s background consisted of thousands upon thousands of people being flown around in a deep, vast chasm; appearing as if the bodies went on indefinitely to the top right of the corner. The moody blue and grey colors made the aura of the artwork depressing and cold, and also gave a sense of helplessness due to the top right corner’s faded darkness. This gives the viewer insight to how the people in the story must feel being eternally gusted around by raging winds. On the other hand, Dante and Virgil’s importance is emphasized by the creation of laurels on their heads; and their shadows falling on to Francesca and Paolo. This shows Dante and Virgil are seen as noble, and that righteousness and light follow behind them. It seems evident that Scheffer’s background and coloring emphasized the ideas of forbidden love and life with additional focus on Francesca and Paolo, while Dore’s background and coloring emphasized pity and despair, condemning the sinners as more of a collective, and adding importance to Dante and Virgil.
Lastly, Scheffer and Dore portrayed different expressions within their masterpieces, creating further divisions in their interpretations of the story.
Scheffer puts Paolo in an appearance of agony; his head tilted back and his forearm covering his face. Francesca contradicts him, looking up to his hidden face as they cling together in the air. Francesca’s face radiates with the love she has for him, and a person who had read the book could tell that that Paolo was in agony for the evil deed done upon them for loving one another. Dore also has Paolo and Francesca clinging together, but Francesca is facing Dante and Virgil while Paolo is keeled back as if he was in pain; signifying that Francesca is regaling Dante and Virgil the story of their woe. The faintest of differences between Scheffer’s and Dore’s illustrations of the lovers’ expressions lead to Scheffer’s appearing as agony from love, while Dore’s appeared as misery from
sin.
This leads to Dante’s and Virgil’s expressions. Scheffer had Dante and Virgil looking at the two lovers as spectators, with Dante and Virgil’s expressions juxtaposing each other. Dante is leaning his head on his hand in a love-struck trance, while Virgil cringes; his eyes fixing a stern glare on the couple. This paints a clear picture that Dante is compassionate and sympathizing of Francesca’s love-tragedy, whereas Virgil can easily see through her lies and has nothing but distaste for them. In contrast, Dore composed Dante’s and Virgil’s back to be faced towards the viewer; making their body language the focus. Specifically, Dante is bent towards Francesca and Paolo, while Virgil has his hand on Dante’s shoulder; etching the picture that Dante is listening, entranced to the lovers’ misfortunes, while Virgil supports Dante as his guide. Virgil’s hand on Dante may also hint that Virgil is holding Dante back from leaning too far into the winds of lust, for Virgil knows Dante is closest to this circle.
Overall, Scheffer and Dore’s beautiful artwork showcases their different interpretations of Francesca and Paolo’s story from “The Divine Comedy”. They are incomparable; “The Divine Comedy” can allow artists such as Scheffer and Dore to illustrate their different points of view and enforce their various depictions into the world by inducing separate ideas and emotions within the viewer; doing so through different artistic details, such as focal points, backgrounds and coloring, and expressions. As a result of these differences, a viewer can easily see Scheffer’s portrayal of Francesca and Paolo’s love and passion as they regaled Dante and Virgil the tragedy placed onto their “innocence”; while Dore etched Dante witnessing the hopelessness and despair of this circle of hell, gusting around thousands who subdued to lust, with Virgil holding on to Dante as he listened to Francesca and Paolo’s misfortunes so he would not fall into the abyss with them. In the end, art can express emotion, tell stories, and question the human condition. Art created from “The Divine Comedy” has the same scenes depicted in many different ways, all stemming from Dante’s ability to stir feelings in the reader. The fact that the artists depicted vastly different interpretations from just one scene, in one canto out of a hundred, shows how much a work of art the book itself has come to be.