Inferno IX: The Furies at the Gates of Dis

Inferno IX: The Furies at the Gates of Dis

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Arriving at the gates of the city of Dis, Dante and Virgil are accosted by three furies, minions of Medusa. 

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Dante and Virgil meet some formidable foes in the furies, Greek figures of vengeance with bat wings and snakes for hair, who carried instruments of torture and punishment: a whip, a chalice of poison and a torch. They hover at the gates of Dis, a walled city whose architecture included mosques (presumably inspired by Jerusalem of the 14th century). Because Islam was a relatively new religion—considered heresy in the eyes of the Church and was certainly not Christianity—its monuments were fitting features of a city whose primary descriptive elements contradict conceptions of Paradiso.