Unlike his usual works of art, in Dante and Virgil Bouguereau describes a totally different atmosphere.
The artist depicts in this famous painting a scene from a classic poem written by Dante Alighieri in 1300 in which Dante is taken to Hell by the dead poet Virgil.
This painting is inspired by a short scene, set in the eighth circle of hell (the circle of counterfeiters and counterfeiters). There, Dante is accompanied by Virgil, as he watches a fight between two damned souls: Capocchio, a heretic and alchemist. assaulted and bitten on the neck by Gianni Schicchi, who had usurped the identity of a dead man to fraudulently claim his inheritance.
Dante and Virgil in Hell is ranked no. 64 on the list of famous paintings