The Divine Comedy

Marco Russo Art + Edizioni Carthesia

Three painting on canvas (50x70 cm size) that tells the poet's journey.

Il Progetto:

La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri in un nuovo volume illustrato.

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Inferno (The Hell)

– Canto XXXI –

Hell is the best known part of Dante's Divine Comedy, therefore it is the part that has been most illustrated and reproduced. With all the references available then, it was easy to come up with ideas in my mind among the various songs and in fact, I had several in mind: The famous scene of Canto I where Charon ferries Dante and Virgil, or the close-up of the Poet who seeing the tortured souls, he gives in to a cry of fear, sorrow, terror and a sense of guilt.

However, I was looking for new images, which had never been reproduced and above all, which could be as dynamic as the cover of a super-hero comic but painted in the most traditional sense.

I therefore chose Canto XXI where Dante visits the pit of the giants. But how giants? Dante says they were like towers. I wanted to represent a claustrophobic scene: Men of enormous size tied close to each other with half a body in the water. Around them, in the dark, the infernal warm light.

Their faces clearly express their discomfort: they are confused, they cannot move, they cannot get out of the water, they cannot immerse the part outside, they cannot communicate, let off steam, be heard. So it has been for millennia and so it will be forever and Dante looks at all this, amazed, from a higher point of the path.

He will have to go down, because in the hell he describes, one must always go down but not even from that elevated point, he can see the giants from above and in fact he is under the vanishing point.

The canvas has had an evolving genesis, especially as regards the colors. Initially I thought of playing a warm contrast for Dante and the part of the earth on which he stands and cold colors for the giants.

But I felt the need to warm up those cool colors but I needed a color to do it. A particular color that was the fulcrum of everything.

One day with my wife and my mother we went to lunch in an oriental restaurant and next to it there was also one of the classic Chinese shops full of everything. My mom had to shop so we went in and usually these shops always have a stationery-stationery department. This, however, also had a series of very particular acrylic colors, between them I recognized how it was a lighting, the color I needed: a fluorescent pink!

That particular "point" of color gave the atmosphere to the image. The warm light reflects on the rough ceiling, made of boiling rock on one side and frozen on the other.

To get that material effect I used dense paint and acrylic plaster. To the touch, it feels even more real!

Purgatory

– Canto XXXI –

For me, purgatory was a real discovery. I found it fantastic! But what could I represent?

After the descent, the ascent to the mountain? Dante in the fire that doesn't burn? No. There was only one image to make, the summit of history up to the vision of God in heaven and to describe it in words, not a few can be used.

At the end of Dante's impervious path, after seeing horrible things, after passing tests that forced the protagonist to overcome many of his limits, he arrives there, at the entrance to heaven: Canto XXXI.

Dante's eyes go from seeing the atrocious tortures of the damned, sinners of all kinds, to the garden of Eden, the paradise, and who does he meet? Her. His muse, her love, his obsession.

He made the hardest journey in human history just to reach it. On her side, she went down to hell to ask Virgil to take Dante and bring him to her, when he could have stayed there in heaven in eternal peace. How does this love story that has traveled beyond death, time, space, evil and good end? What does Beatrice say to the great poet when she sees him? Will she whisper to her everything she did? Will you tell her about her plan to give Dante the privilege of knowing the 3 kingdoms of the afterlife? She scolds him bitterly!

Twist of the scene. Climax. Everyone in front of the TV still. With the hand in front of the mouth opened. Fingers holding a popcorn. All stopped.

Beatrice reproaches Dante for practically everything and the devastated poet collapses to the ground crying. But why? For love.

Beatrice wanted to allow Dante to access heaven and therefore she had to repent of all sin because God cannot be accessed by unrepentant sinners. What a love story!

All these words are perhaps useless, however, if you are in front of the painting. Although they have many variations, the canvas is basically composed of green and red. The green is that of the earthly paradise, bright but there are two reds: Dante is dressed in red and also Beatrice. I wanted to play with it: Beatrice wears a red that has a greater component of white inside, which therefore makes it more pink. (Carmine and vermilion), while Dante has a red dress with a greater component of yellow, which makes it warmer and "fire" (coincidentally) and "earth" colors. Above all, Dante at this moment is a sinner who is dealing with his sins and therefore is darker than both the earthly paradise and Beatrice, who has already put things right with God.

Paradiso

– CANTO XXI –

Il paradiso mi ha dato qualche difficoltà. Innanzitutto è in assoluto la parte meno conosciuta.

Ci sono pochissime immagini e direi anche informazioni in merito.

Nota positiva, non sarei stato sicuramente influenzato. Nota negativa, non sapevo da dove partire.

Another problem: the iconography.

Alla parola paradiso (inteso come reame celeste) cosa ci viene in mente? Angeli? Nuvole? Diciamo che tale iconografia non si poteva modificare più di tanto. Se nell’inferno l’innovazione è stata usare un colore fluo, non potevo innovare creando un ambiente “celeste” diverso. Dante era un religioso che scrisse ciò che conosceva. Cita la Bibbia, parla ed incontra uomini con cariche religiose e quindi, lui di certo, lo immaginava così. Ho scelto quindi un immagine con un iconografia “strutturata”, il canto XXI, lo scaleo d’oro.

Come ve la immaginate la scala verso il paradiso? Sono andato sul classico: marmo. E come si compone l’immagine? Dante che si guarda intorno felice ed incredulo, dietro di lui (o meglio, davanti a lui) Beatrice, in prospettiva più vicina a Dio di lui, che gli indica la strada, il punto di fuga centrale, in alto, da cui proviene la luce: Dio,

Dante is about to get there.

I asked for the help of an expert to understand the context. On the stairs, men go up and down, in an ethereal, luminous form. I imagined that these characters could have a clearer and more human form as they descend, approaching, so to speak, the lower floors; and that they were more united to the central light in the ascent phase.

Lo sfondo è un immenso tripudio di colori calmi e rilassanti composti da turchese, blu e violacei che si scontrano con luci giallo paglierino con tocchi “arcobaleno” dati dalla forte luce centrale calda e pura. Tali riflessi sono stati fatti con colori acrilici giallo e fucsia fluo. Questo tipo di colori alzano la saturazione del colore in un modo particolare, anche quando vengono mescolati con colori con parametri “standard”.

Hell - Canto XXI

Descrizione che ho scritto sul certificato

Purgatory – Canto XXXI

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Heaven – Canto XXI

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Carthesia Editore

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