Inferno XV: An Unexpected Reunion

Inferno XV: An Unexpected Reunion

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Once Virgil has completed his lengthy parable of the Old Man of Crete, our heroes forge ahead in the seventh circle, eventually crossing paths with a gang of sodomites—those who have perpetrated violence against nature. At this juncture, Dante exchanges greetings with the mentor and guardian of his youth, Brunetto Latini.

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Inferno XV features one of the oddest and least understood placements of personalities. This is the realm of the sodomites,  those nasty gents whose buggery has doomed them to the scalding sands of the seventh circle, eternally dodging flakes of flame that rain from the sky. Dante is shocked to encounter a beloved figure from his past, a gentleman named Brunetto Latini, who guided Dante for many years, intellectually, socially and morally. He greets Dante with a mix of joy, affection and desperation. But why is Brunetto—a revered and beloved figure in the life of Dante—punished so cruelly? He is condemned to a fate reserved for sodomites and yet there is no historical evidence that he was himself  homosexual, nor is there any revealing discussion of this confusing placement embedded in the dialogue.

The conception of this illustration came very naturally, as the starting point is rich: the potent irony of Dante, once the student, reversing roles with a former authoritative father figure (and I have to admit that I wondered if Brunetto’s appearance here was a way of hinting that some previously concealed and inappropriate man-boy dynamic existed); the somewhat desperate way that Brunetto reaches up to grasp Dante’s robe, and the possible erotic inferences in that movement. I felt as if my task here was to reference an unspoken (and still uncertain) past between the two characters, avoiding explicit commitment to anything sketchy but leaving open a few possibilities. 

Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete

Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

A fantastic interlude occurs in the fourteenth canto of L’Inferno as Virgil revives imagery from Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, an image of a giant statue made from various materials, from precious and strong on the top to crumbling clay at the bottom.

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After leaving the Forest of Suicides Dante and Virgil traverse the burning sands of the the seventh circle of hell. Their conversation is set aside for a time as Virgil relates the allegory of the Old Man of Crete, an image borrowed from the second chapter of the Book of Daniel, in which the great King Nebudchadnezzar is visited by a dream of a giant statue, metaphorically composed of various materials—strong to weak, precious to worthless. In Virgil’s description the statue is an enormous colossus, emerging from the side of Mount Ida in Crete. 

The statue’s back faces Egypt, heretofore the world’s dominant society, and looks to Rome in deference to Christian rule. As a symbol of humanity’s crumbling moral and political fortitude it has a head of gold, arms and breast made of silver, bronze abdomen and thighs, and iron legs. His right foot, upon which he rests most of his weight, is made of crumbling, kiln baked clay, a symbol of the deteriorating institution of the medieval Catholic Church. He cries tears (through cracks in his body, not as I have depicted it in the illustration) which on the ground below create the four rivers of Inferno: Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus. 

This is my favorite drawing so far, in part because of the sheer complexity of the image I needed to make. I relied a bit on ancient conceptions of Nebudchadnezzar is developing the costume and styling of hair and beard (see below), and really enjoyed interpreting the various active aspects of the image, finding concise and iconic ways to indicate is gaze, the tears, the geography, and materiality.