Art, Symbol & Imagination
The Recurring Wounds of the Schism Ditch
Severely wounded figures occupy the rocky foreground beneath a sword-bearing executioner as the travellers observe from nearby. The source caption names Muhammad using the historical translation’s spelling. Dante’s canto places him and Ali in a hostile medieval Christian construction of religious division, with wounds closing and reopening on each circuit. Doré represents that imagined violence graphically. The image is presented as evidence of the poem and its nineteenth-century illustration, not as biography, a factual religious claim or an endorsement of the representation. Its subject requires that distinction when viewed outside the book.
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Citation
Gustave Doré (design). "The Recurring Wounds of the Schism Ditch" [editorial title]. In Dante's Inferno, Dante Alighieri. New Edition, undated supplied scan, undated edition, Thompson & Thomas. Source scan leaf 184. Lumitheca. /gallery/image/inferno-dore-177
Source details
Editorial title and description. Source details from the Library catalogue.
Full original plate and caption individually inspected; exact neighbouring canto read. Editorial title. Source tone and intrinsic damage retained; rotation applies only to Gallery derivatives.
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Dante's InfernoDante AlighieriUndated editionMore from this book
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Gustave Doré (design). The Recurring Wounds of the Schism Ditch. Dante's Inferno. Scan leaf 184. Lumitheca. https://lumitheca.com/gallery/image/inferno-dore-177