Dali's Vision of Satan and the Divine Comedy

After finishing Inferno, one thing that I wanted to know more about was Dante's depiction of Satan. The image of Lucifer as dumb and weeping with three multi-colored heads is one that I had never seen or heard of before. Within this question in mind, I sought out more artistic representations of the Comedy. I found a few scattered images of Satan with three faces, feasting on Judas and the rest. But eventually I stumbled upon a few sites that had Salvador Dali's collection of pieces depicting each canto of the Divine Comedy. The one that seemed most complete (while unfortunately having very small images online) was the CFM Gallery.

The website explains the context for Dali's creation:
"In the early 1950s, shortly before the septecentennial of Dante's birth, Dali was invited by the Italian government to produce a series of illustrations for a deluxe edition of The Divine Comedy to be published by La Libreria dello Stato in Rome. Between 1951 and 1960 Dali created a series of 101 watercolors for the book, which was unhappily never completely realized in its textural form.

"The watercolors were exhibited at the Palazzo Pallavici in Rome. However, the reception of Dali's project in Italy was extremely negative, since it did not seem appropriate for a Spanish (rather than Italian) painter, much less an irreverent Surrealist and sometime fascist sympathizer, to illustrate a commemorative edition of the greatest Italian poet's masterpiece to be published by the State Press."

Despite the negative feedback, Dali eventually completed the project with the help of a French publisher. 

As I mentioned before, Dali made a print for each canto. Of course, the first print I looked for was one depicting Satan. I found one titled "The Devil Logician"  (http://www.cfmgallery.com/Salvador-Dali/pages/Hell/Hell27.htm) but it is not considered a reference to the image of Satan at the end of Inferno. Instead, it is a reference to Canto 27, where Guido da Montefeltro explains how he was tricked by Boniface VIII. Guido describes how Satan stops the angels from taking Guido to heaven and brings him to hell instead, saying "Oh wretched me! how I trembled when he seized me, telling me: 'Perhaps you did not think I was a logician!'" (27.121-3)

The line is considered by translator and editor Durling to be a reference to the inability of the devil to philosophize and his ability to use Aristotelean logic instead, but this doesn't seem very relevant to the picture. Dali's image shows Satan with only one face, eating one sinner that we presume is Judas. There is some kind of large wedge in Satan's head that is similar to the color of the sinner in his mouth, but it is not clear what it is. It also reflects an image of another person. I'm not sure what Dali's intent was with this choice of representation and or why he chose to depict the devil in Canto 27 instead of Canto 34, but nonetheless his art adds more to the vast canon of Dante. I hope to return to Dali's prints as we move into Purgatorio.