Count Ugolino was a leading and treacherous politician, who could only be trusted to betray others. He was left to die in prison of starvation.
Blake
From the fraudsters in the last rottenpocket of the eighth circle of Hell, they move on the ninth circle of the treacherous – a frozen lake. Paintings by Doré, Blake, Bouguereau, and Fuseli.
From thieves, Dante and Virgil move on to meet souls of those who had committed fraud, including Ulysses, a headless troubadour, and an alchemist.
From barrators, being hacked at by a pack of devils in their boiling tar, through hypocrites wearing habits weighted with lead, to thieves being tormented by snakes. Sheer hell.
A Bolognese man who pimped his sister, Jason of Golden Fleece fame, a couple of popes, and assorted astrologers – all suffering for their sins.
These sinners are on barren sand, flakes of fire falling on their exposed flesh. Having spoken to some, Dante and Virgil board the monster Geryon.
Dante and Virgil pass the Minotaur and move into the seventh circle, where murderers and highwaymen are immersed in boiling blood, and Harpies torment those who took their own lives.
Popular in the early Renaissance, it was revived by William Blake, the Nabis, and a few others. Despite its disadvantages, these are wonderful paintings.
After the Furies appear at the gate of Dis, an angel opens the gate, and Dante and Virgil see the tombs containing those guilty of heresy.
In the fourth circle, the avaricious and spendthrifts push boulders at one another. In the fifth are the wrathful and the miserable, steeped in the Stygian marsh.
