Explore the abstract of this artwork, The Barque of Dante.
The Barque of Dante (French: La Barque de Dante), also Dante and Virgil in Hell (Dante et Virgile aux enfers), is the first major painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, and is a work signalling the shift in the character of narrative painting, from Neo-Classicism towards Romanticism. The painting loosely depicts events narrated in canto eight of Dante's Inferno; a leaden, smoky mist and the blazing City of the Dead form the backdrop against which the poet Dante fearfully endures his crossing of the River Styx. As his barque ploughs through waters heaving with tormented souls, Dante is steadied by Virgil, the learned poet of Classical antiquity.
Pictorially, the arrangement of a group of central, upright figures, and the rational arrangement of subsidiary figures in studied poses, all in horizontal planes, complies with the tenets of the cool and reflective Neo-Classicism that had dominated French painting for nearly four decades. The Barque of Dante was completed for the opening of the Salon of 1822, and currently hangs in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Styx planes River Styx The Barque of Dante Salon Dante's City of the Dead Romanticism Musée du Louvre Virgil right Classical antiquity Louvre Inferno 1822 Paris Neo-Classicism Eugène Delacroix Dante and Virgil