William-Adolphe Bouguereau was inspired by a short scene in Dante's Inferno when he created his masterful painting, Dante and Virgil (1850). Dante, accompanied by Virgil, visit the eighth circle of Hell, designated for falsifiers and counterfeiters. Together they watch a fight between two damned souls: Capocchio, condemned as an alchemist is bitten by Gianni Schicchi, who in life fraudulently claimed another man's inheritance. The colors, dramatic lighting and dynamic composition are so different from Bouguereau's other paintings, which are female-centric in idyllic settings.
If you are lucky enough to be in Paris, France, the painting is in the
permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay.
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