gothic_image

Gothic Image of the Month ....

A picture selected at random from my ever-growing collection gathered from the magical world of the Internet, or various books and learned tomes. It could be wonderful; could be crap. Whatever comes up next. That's what makes it interesting.

Collect the whole set! - You'll be lucky, I've got about 1500 clattering around.

October 2009 - Plate from Dante's Inferno by Gustave Doré (1857)

Of all the many treatments of Dante Alighieri's great medieval poem The Divine Comedy, Gustave Doré's illustrations are among the most familiar. With its grotesqueries, black humour, horror and sense of vice punished, and sometimes - almost - celebrated, the Inferno is many artists' favourite bit of the poem, and occasionally they get no further. So it's no surprise that Doré's version emerged a decade ahead of his illustrations of the Purgatorio and Paradiso. He captures much of Dante's wicked sense of humour, but there's little fun to be had in this, from the introductory matter and showing antique poet Virgil leading Dante himself to the gateway into the underworld, inscribed with that famous verse, 'Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here'. Wonderful stuff.
Of course Doré also produced deliciously creepy illustrations of fictional works such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and of Victorian London - but more of those perhaps another time.