Art, Symbol & Imagination
The Poets Pass among the Burning Tombs
Dante and Virgil walk between open stone graves whose lifted lids and emerging bodies interrupt an otherwise bare, shadowed ground. After entry to Dis, the travellers encounter the fiery cemetery of those the poem calls arch-heretics and their followers. Doré places the living visitor and his guide on a narrow route between the graves, with small areas of brightness indicating the burning interiors. The repeated shapes carry the scene into the distance. The caption provides the guide’s identification of its inhabitants. This is Dante’s literary theology represented by a nineteenth-century illustrator, not an independent judgement about the beliefs or fate of real people.
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Citation
Gustave Doré (design). "The Poets Pass among the Burning Tombs" [editorial title]. In Dante's Inferno, Dante Alighieri. New Edition, undated supplied scan, undated edition, Thompson & Thomas. Source scan leaf 83. Lumitheca. /gallery/image/inferno-dore-76
Source details
Editorial title and description. Source details from the Library catalogue.
Full original plate and caption visually inspected. Editorial title; original scan tone and intrinsic damage retained. Sideways plates rotated in the Gallery derivative only.
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Gustave Doré (design). The Poets Pass among the Burning Tombs. Dante's Inferno. Scan leaf 83. Lumitheca. https://lumitheca.com/gallery/image/inferno-dore-76