The Minotaur

For a picture of Dore's engraving, click here.                

                Often when an artist is interpreting and illustrating some scene based on another’s piece, the new artwork will have some of the artist’s own ideas and influences mixed in. Yet often Dore seems to follow the prose found in the Inferno to the slightest details. His illustrations flow well with the poem because he followed Dante’s epic so meticulously.

                But the two artists seem to differ in their descriptions of the guardian to Canto 12, the Minotaur. The poem describes the Minotaur as being “like a bull…unable to walk but jumps here and there” (12. 22-24). This sounds like the beast is hopping around on four legs, as a bull would do. But this would reverse the physical features of the mythical being. Instead of having the body of a man and the head of a bull, as you find in the myths, the Minotaur is given the body of a bull and the head of a man. The notes in the book claim that this may be due to the fact that Dante did not have the ancient artwork displaying the actual appearance of the Minotaur. Furthermore, Ovid’s description that was available to Dante only says the beast was half-man and half-bull, yet fails to denote which half was which.

                And so we return to Dore’s engraving of the Minotaur. In the scene Virgil and the pilgrim look upon the guardian as he was imagined in the ancient myth, not as Dante saw the creature. Previously, Dore followed Dante’s words so closely; now he strays from the text. I find this very interesting. Dore seems to be giving more credibility and authority to a pagan myth rather than the retelling of a journey through Christian Hell by a fellow Christian. It would seem that even if Dante misinterpreted the features of the Minotaur, Dore would have shown a more devout Christian attitude in illustrating him as the poet says. In this instance it was more important for Dore to correctly depict the Minotaur rather than be true to Inferno. While Dante’s idea of the wedding of animalistic instinct and human rationality remains the same, the appearance is changed. It just seems interesting that a mythical story was given more authority than the “recounting” of a Christian man’s personal journey through Hell.