''Dante and Virgil in Hell'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French academic painter

William-Adolphe Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French Academic art, academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classicism, classical subjects, with a ...

, from 1850. It is in the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. The painting depicts a scene from Dante's ''

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' (, ) is an Italian narrative poetry, narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of ...

'', which narrates a journey through Hell by

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

and his guide

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

. In the scene the author and his guide are looking on as two damned souls are entwined in eternal combat. One of the souls is an alchemist and heretic named Capocchio. He is being bitten on the neck by the trickster

Gianni Schicchi () is a comic opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, composed in 1917–18. The libretto is based on an incident mentioned in Dante's ''Divine Comedy''. The work is the third and final part of Puccin ...

, who had used fraud to claim another man's inheritance. It was Bougereau's third and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to win the coveted

Prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

, even though he had submitted a work that he knew would appeal to the judges. He did however find partial success in his efforts later in the year when ''

Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes ''Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes'' is an 1850 oil-on-canvas painting by the French academic painter William Bouguereau, now in the Beaux-Arts de Paris. Its subject is drawn from Tacitus's ''Histories'' (XII.51), in which Rhada ...

'' won the consolation second prize of the year. Pierre Daix, ''Pour une histoire culturelle de l'art moderne: de David à Cézanne'', Odile Jacob, 1998 ()

References

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* 1850 paintings Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay Paintings by William-Adolphe Bouguereau Nude paintings of men Paintings of Dante Alighieri Paintings of Virgil Paintings based on Inferno (Dante) Demons in art Oil on canvas paintings {{1850s-painting-stub