The Punishment of Gluttony
This is an original art print. It is 126 years old.
Artist: Gustave Dore
Type of Print: Original Antique Wood Engraving
Size of Paper: 9 3/4" x 12 1/2"
Size of Image: 7 3/4" x 9 3/4"
Printed in 1887 by Cassell Publishing
Printed on one side only; blank on the reverse. You will receive two sheets of paper; one is the art print and the other is the description.
Condition: Light signs of age. Yellowing around edges of paper. The image area is in excellent condition.
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More Information About the Print:
The sixth region of Purgatory, according to Dante, is that in which the sin of gluttony is punished. Dante, Virgil, and Statius, in the course of their wanderings in this part, behold a tree hung with sweet-smelling fruit, and watered by a crystal fountain ; and from the boughs issue voices enjoining temperance in food, and recording wonderful examples of that virtue in ancient times. Shortly afterwards, the three poets meet a troop of spirits with pale visages, and bodies so lean that the bones appear starting through the skin. The sockets of their eyes seem as rings from which the gems have dropped out. One of these spirits turns his eyes in their deep-sunken cells full on Dante, and addresses him. The Florentine then recognises the features of his friend Forese, also a poet.
" Ah I respect
This wan and leprous-wither'd skin,' thus he
Suppliant implor'd, 'this macerated flesh.
Speak to me truly of thyself. And who
Are those twain spirits, that escort thee there ?
Be it not said thou scorn'st to talk with me.'
'"That face of thine,' I answer'd him, 'which, dead,
I once bewail'd, disposes me not less
For weeping when I see it thus transform'd.
Say then, by Heaven, what blasts ye thus? The whilst
I wonder, ask not speech from me : unapt
Is he to speak whom other will employs.'
"He thus: ' The water and the plant we pass'd
With power are gifted, by the Eternal Will
Infused ; the which so pines me. Every spirit
Whose song bewails his gluttony indulged
Too grossly, here in hunger and in thirst
Is purified. The odour which the fruit,
And spray that showers upon the verdure, breathe
Inflames us with desire to feed and drink.
Nor once alone, encompassing our route,
We come to add fresh fuel to the pain,'"
With wonderful particularity of detail has Dante constructed his picture of Purgatory; and in the illustration we have here given, not a little of the strangeness of that dreamy and ghostly land has been realised.
