“Inferno”, oil by unknown author (c. 1510)
The huge panel features monsters with intersex characteristics and details inspired by Africa and the Caribbean, which encourage viewers to associate the sins and punishments represented with those considered “others”.
In an article published last week in , British science historian Surekha Davies makes a detailed analysis of a peculiar Portuguese work, appropriately titled “Inferno“.
The huge panel, by an unknown author and completed between 1510 and 1520, depicts busy demons administering punishments to souls guilty of the famous 7 deadly sins.
The eternal torments portrayed in the work mirror the crimes of sinnerssays Davies.
O jovial demon on the far left it fan flames that disfigure the beauty of three naked women in hell for your vanity. The winged, horned and greenish demon next to the trio stuffs a gold coin into the mouth of someone who is being punished for avarice.
Nearby, a demon with goat head uses a wineskin and a funnel to force-feeding a person guilty of gluttony. On the far right, a man and a woman are tied togethercondemned to burn for the sin of lust.
Dominating the center of the panel, which is located / Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, in Lisbon, is a smoking cauldron with a potion of ominous green.
O Cauldron motif became widespread in the art of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, after the popularization of the medieval tale “The Visions of the Tundal Knight”, about aa trip to hell and paradise.
The large pot signaled the sin of laziness, or idleness, to which the clergy were believed to be especially susceptible.
In “Inferno”, five figures languish inside the cauldronseveral with anguished faces turned upward as if begging a higher power to free them from their bubbling torment.
Two of these figures have tonsured heads, offering a reminder that taking holy orders and shaving the top of the head did not guarantee salvation.
To the right of the cauldron, a demon with tail and feathers carries a monk or friar on his shoulder while leading a chained figure by the hand.
In the foreground, a figure contained by boards is force-fed with something that resembles a pearl in its shell, perhaps languishing in hell for the sin of envy.
Presiding over the cauldronon a crimson throne decorated with glittering touches of inlay is Satan, the devil himself. His plume of feathers and tunic immediately associate it with Brazilin what was then called the “New World”.
Second Cécile Fromontart historian at Harvard University, these objects “are indisputable signs that this is to be read as some figure of an ‘elsewhere’a theoretical space that was becoming specifically related to South America and Brazil”.
In light of these ultramarine motifsthe powdery substance that spills into the funnel in the middle of the painting may represent spices, luxury goods which motivated European monarchs and investors to finance the search for sea routes to Southeast Asia, to what was then known as the Spice Islands.
During the 16th century, objects and beings that people feared in life shaped the way they imagined hell. The demons in the painting are monsters: they blur conventional boundaries between human and animal, between men and women, and between the faithful and the diabolical.
To the integrate aspects of West African and South American culture in the devil and his demons, “Inferno” seems to offer a warning.
Since punishments in hell were understood to correspond to earthly sins, the force-feeding of gold and spices invites viewers to consider whether the oceanic commercial ventures that launched the Portuguese overseas empire in the decades immediately preceding the painting’s creation may have had a spiritual cost.
“Inferno” came to light at the beginning of the 19th century and was soon installed in the recently founded Royal Academy (now National) of Fine Arts in Lisbon. The painting was most likely commissioned for a religious houselike a monastery — where, says Davies, it would have functioned as a warning against sin.
The oldest surviving description of the work of art appears in the academy’s oldest known inventory, from 1862, which announces that it is a “allegory of those condemned to eternal tormenttaken from Dante’s Divine Comedy.”
The visual elements and style of the disturbing panel show the influence of Flemish paintingan artistic tradition that flourished in this period in what is now Belgium, the southern Netherlands and parts of northern France. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal had strong artistic and commercial connections with this region.
Painters from what is known as the Flemish School, as Jan van Eycktraveled to Lisbon for orders. Others, like Antonio de Holandawhose illustrations for a 1519 manuscript known as the Miller Atlas included people in feathered costumes in Brazil, made Portugal his home.
E and confused body partsthe infernal terrors and demons of “Inferno” are reminiscent of paintings by Hieronymus Boschthe Dutch painter known for his horrifying hellscapes.
Because when it came to describing the horrors that awaited those who dared to cross the oceans and beyond them incur mortal sins, Portuguese painters were nothing behind Dante or the Flemish artists…
