Sandro Botticelli worked on the illustrations to the Dante’s Divine Comedy for 20 years from 1480 to 1500. 92 drawings on sheepskin parchments survived, out of 100 in the entire series. There are 84 drawing in Kupferstichkabinett AKA Staatliche Museen in Berlin and 8 in Biblioteca Vaticana in Rome.
Inferno, Canto XXXIV (detail) 1480s Silverpoint, completed in pen and ink Staatliche Museen, Berlin
The Abyss of Hell 1480s Coloured drawing on parchment, 320 x 470 mm Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome
Inferno, 1480s Silverpoint on parchment, completed in pen and ink, coloured with tempera Biblioteca Vaticana, Rome
Note the two embracing figures in the lower and upper right.
Inferno, Canto XXXI 1480s Silverpoint on parchment, completed in pen and ink, 320 x 470 mm
Inferno, Canto XVIII 1480s Coloured drawing on parchment, 320 x 470 mm Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Inferno, Canto XVIII (detail)
Purgatory X, 1490s Drawing on parchment, 320 x 470 mm Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Paradise, Canto VI 1490s Silverpoint on parchment, completed in pen and ink, 320 x 470 mm Staatliche Museen, Berlin
It’s interesting that the Paradise drawings are beautifully abstract and balanced. All they show is Dante floating around with his muse Beatrice Portinari. Paradise illustration is the dreamy and romantic Sandro Botticelli. Not so the hell illustatrion. Here Boticelly is almost Hieronymus Bosch like. His imagination is unconstrained, vivid and torturersly multidimensional. Perhasp Dante’s Hell gave the outlet to the real Sandro Botticelli, not the one we know from the soft allegories.
Paradise, Canto XXX 1490s Drawing on parchment, 320 x 470 mm Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Inferno, 1480s Silverpoint on parchment, completed in pen and ink, coloured with tempera Biblioteca Vaticana, Rome
Published with permission from the Web Gallery of Art.
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