The Inferno according to Dante

Engraving, 1470 circa. Later edition, around the end of 18^th Century..

At the upper left: QUESTO+ ELINFERNO + DEL + CHĀ [ M ] POSAN / TO + DIPISA + ( "This is the Inferno of the Camposanto of Pisa"); below the figure emerging from the mouth at Lucifer's groin , in reverse : SIMON / MAGVS ; on the crowns of four kings held by the claws of Lucifer's right foot : WABVC / DINASOR ( " Nebuchadnezzar " ) , IVLIANO- / APOSTOTA ( " Julian [ the ] Apostate " ) , ADILA : F [ L ] Ā / GELV [ M ] DEI ( " Attila , scourge of God " ) , and RFS / IARV3 ( Rex Persiarum ; “ King of the Persians ” ) ; on a scroll above a man tormented by a devil below Lucifer's left foot : IA [ or TA ]

“As one of its inscriptions indicates, the print represents the Inferno of the Camposanto of Pisa, which is to say an unreversed copy of the mid - trecento Hell scene that forms part of a gigantic Last Judgment in the Campo santo, a well - known fresco most frequently attributed to Francesco Traini (see esp. Meiss 1933, pp .97-173; and, for detailed illustrations in addition to a summary of the attributionary controversy, Carli 1958-61, vol. 1 [ 1958], pp. 55-61, pls. 114-18). The mural was in poor condition as early as the fourteenth century, and Giuliano Sollazzino's restoration of 1530 (already mentioned by Vasari, vol. 1, pp. 599-600) followed at least three previous campaigns (according to Milanesi, in his note to Vasari's statement; and Supino, p. 89). Given these circumstances, in some respects the engraving conveys a better impression of the original composition than the fresco itself, especially in its lower portions where repainting has been most extensive. Convinced of this, Alessandro da Morrona published an impression of .028 in his early guidebook to the city of Pisa, printing it from the original copper plate in his possession. The plate's survival into relatively modern times (it last appeared in the Eugène Piot sale, Paris, 1890, no. 316) accounts for the large number of extant impressions of the engraving, all of them apparently reworked and dating to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The repositories noted below surely comprise only a partial list of those that own loose impressions, some of which are probably among the twenty - two impressions that accompanied the plate in the Piot sale of 1890. In addition to these, there are loose impressions (listed by Hind 1938) found inserted into various copies of the 1481 Florentine edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (with Cristoforo Landino's commentary and Baccio Baldini's illustrations (see TIB 2403.093 - .111 ] ) ; and other impressions , folded several times , are bound into numerous copies of Morrona's Pisan guidebook .

Engraved on the other side of Morrona's plate was the St. Jerome in Penitence (029), which also exists in a relatively large number of modern impressions. Like the present item, they bear the marks of nail or rivet holes at the upper corners, signs that the plate had been bolted down to another surface in order to avoid scratching the side already engraved. The two prints are surely by the same hand, that of a Florentine artist from the circle of Baccio Baldini (to whom Passavant, Kolloff , and Phillips attributed them ). Although suggested dates have ranged from ca. 1460-80 to ca. 1480-1500, the present writer tentatively favors a period around 1470, regarding the 1460s as somewhat too early and the 1480s or 1490s as somewhat too late. A distinctive feature of both the present item and its companion is the use of metal punches of various sizes to produce patterns of circles (on the ships in .029 and some of the devils in .028). a technique also employed for the same purpose in many other early Florentine engravings. Here the circles are especially prominent on the figure of Lucifer, which is covered with a similar (painted) pattern in the fresco at the Camposanto. The engraving is noteworthy for being the earliest surviving printed copy of a painting whose status as a reproduction is acknow Iodured on the plate itself.  Obviously, the Hell scene in Pisa continued to impress viewers more than a century after its completion. […]

The composition must have owed its popularity chiefly to its grisly and fantastical imagery, but it would also have helped its viewers better to envision what they read about the configuration of Hell in Dante's Inferno. Since the print cannot, however, be considered a literal representation of Dante's Hell, Hind's title, The Inferno According to Dante, is not precisely right. Evaluating the engraving's iconography in relation to the text of Inferno, Levenson showed that Hind was mistaken, but he neglected to mention that Supino (p. 87) had already made the same point in connection with the painting in the Camposanto, and failed to note that Vasari (vol. 1, p. 599) had described the fresco in exactly the same terms (“un Inferno, secondo che è descritto da Dante “). As noted above, the inscription ASIARV3 (Rex Persiarum) on the crown of a figure grasped by Lucifer's claws refers to an unspecified " King of the Persians”; compare similar abbreviations of this title associated with the Persian emperors Darius and Cambyses in several fifteenth - century " picture - chronicles” ( Degenhart and Schmitt , vol . 1-2, figs . 826-28, 830). [...]The significance of the last inscription (IA or TA) is obscure but what Hind (1948) read as a third letter (e) is actually the curved end of the scroll on which the initials are inscribed.” Mark J. Zucker in TIB, 24 commentary Part 2, 2405.028.