The artwork “Dante” is named after an author of a famous work of literature – The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Why? There is no hidden meaning behind, just the resemblance. Look close on the picture of the artwork bellow to find out yourself.
On the surface, the poem describes Dante’s travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven; but at a deeper level, it represents, the soul’s journey towards God.
The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three canticas (Italian plural cantiche) – Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) – each consisting of 33 cantos (Italian plural canti). An initial canto, serving as an intro-duction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica, brings the total number of cantos to 100. It is generally accepted, however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the entire epic, and that the opening two cantos of each cantica serve as prologues to each of the three canticas.
Here are some inspiring book quotes:
- “The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.”
- “The devil is not as black as he is painted.”
- “Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
- “The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.”