The Barque of Dante

1822

Oil on canvas, 189 × 241.5 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris

Two poets cross a river in hell in a small boat while the damned claw at its sides. The National Gallery's Christopher Riopelle says this first Salon picture made its young painter famous almost overnight.

Shown at the Salon of 1822 and bought from it by the royal museums for 2,000 francs.
Look at Dante in his red hood, recoiling, while a calm Virgil steadies him by the hand.
The crowded, tilting boat on dark water owes a clear debt to Géricault's raft, shown three years before.
Literature becomes a source: a scene from Dante's Inferno is painted with Rubens-like color and heavy, twisting muscle instead of the cool, drawn line taught in David's school.
Displayed at the Luxembourg for as long as Delacroix lived; transferred to the Louvre in 1874.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)