"The Descent"

For an article about "The Descent" and other pieces by Rachel Kneebone click here. For two pictures of "The Descent" click here and here.

While looking for more modern artwork inspired by Dante I stumbled upon Rachel Kneebone’s 2008 sculpture, “The Descent.” Measuring five feet tall and twelve feet wide, the pit captures a number of its subjects doing some stumbling of their own, falling down the levels of Hell, into its very depths.

 Canto 5 claims that the second circle “encloses a smaller space (5.2)” as compared to the first circle. This gives Hell the aspect of being shaped like a funnel, where crowding and overpopulation would seem like real concerns. Kneebone stays true to the text and illustrates this perfectly as bodies tumble over others on their way to a deeper and darker eternity. Only a number of souls line the sculpture and glance over the edge at the hopeless down below. But it is unclear whether these souls are in a position outside of Hell to pity those below or if they are simply waiting for Charon to ferry them across the smooth expanse of Acheron so they may join their helpless brothers.

An aspect I find particularly interesting about this piece of art is how smooth the walls appear to be. Most of the walls are covered by tumbling bodies but those that you can see appear very smooth, leaving no place for the souls to grab hold of to climb back up. This could mean that once your soul reaches Hell it is not hard to slip farther and farther down into moral depravity. To apply this message to those of us who are still alive; once you are living in sin it does not take much to slide down into an even darker fate. Once on the path of sin it may not be easy to pull yourself back up above the evil that is capturing so many others. And while entering Hell and reaching the bottom seems a simple task, returning from the depths may not be quite so easy. Minos’ words seem to ring true in this sculpture: “be not deceived by the spacious entrance! (5.20)”