An Artist's New Take on The Divine Comedy

Link:
This is a link to Frank's blog about his illustrations of The Divine Comedy.
http://dutchinferno.tumblr.com/ 

This is a link to Gustave Doré's illustrations of The Divine Comedy.
http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_dore.html


Even though The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri was written about 700 years ago, this famous epic poem is, today, still the inspiration of many artists, including Frank Wolfs, a former student of Professor Stocchi-Perucchio.  Frank has been drawing all his life and now, after studying Inferno and the first half of Purgatorio, he has decided to illustrate each canto in Inferno.  He was inspired to illustrate Inferno because there are many interesting images in this book of the comedy.  

Frank began this project in January 2012 with his painting The Faceless.  The Faceless, illustrating Canto 3, depicts those spirits who cannot go to Heaven or Hell after they die because they served neither the Devil nor God during their earthly lives.  As a punishment, these spirits are condemned to live outside the gates of Hell.  In Canto 3, Dante tells the reader that he recognizes some of the spirits, but he never names them.  Since, these spirits are not named, Frank decided to depict the spirits without faces.  His inspiration for how to draw the faces was the cover art of Karmacode, a cd by the Italian band Lacuna Coil.

There is one interesting difference between Frank's illustrations of the spirits in Hell and many other illustrations of The Divine Comedy.  Most pictures depict the spirits in Hell as people with flesh, like a living person (click on the second link above to see Gustave Doré's illustrations of The Divine Comedy).  However, Frank decided to portray the sinners in Hell as skeletons.  He chose to depict the sinners this way because it is different and it stands out.  This portrayal is something that no one else has done.

So far, Frank has only finished two painting based on The Divine Comedy.  There was a five month gap in between the painting of the first and the second painting, but now Frank is working on his third painting for Canto 28.  His sketches for this painting can be found by clicking the first link at the top of this article.