As they can’t continue ascending Purgatory after dark, Dante and Virgil rest overnight in a valley with rulers. In the morning, Dante has been carried up to the gate into Purgatory itself.
Doré
The souls of those who delayed their repentance until shortly before death stay in Ante-purgatory for a whole lifetime. Among them is a virtuous wife who was murdered by her husband.
Dante and Virgil sail to the island-mountain of Purgatory, where they are met by Cato. They then start its ascent, illustrated by William Blake, Doré and others.
The very best paintings showing Dante’s journey through Hell, as described in his Inferno. William Blake, Corot, Doré, Koch, and more.
The final canto of the Inferno takes Dante to see Lucifer himself, after which Virgil guides him back to the surface of earth.
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.
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.
4500 years of paintings of geese, from Rubens’ flock seen at harvest time, to Gauguin’s complement to his landlady. And some superb paintings of wild geese on the wing.
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.
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