Inferno Canto XII

It was to celebrate the 6th anniversary of Dante's death that in 1920 the project for a monumental edition of Dante's work came to life, financed by the lawyer Rino Valdamieri, together with other private investors. Amos Nattini executed the edition: he worked on the illustrations, the typographic aspects, the creation of the characters and the technical aspects. He therefore made 100 watercolors, one for each canticle, which were subsequently lithographed. 1000 copies were printed in hand-made rag paper 140x100 cm with leather cover of white calf. It took 20 years and 7 months to complete the artwork. Nattini also wanted a lectern to contain the three volumes weighing about 27 kg each: it was made by the cabinetmaker Eugenio Quarti, based on a drawing by architects Giò Ponti and Tommaso Buzzi.

Inferno, Canto XII, VII Circle. Through a spectacular bird's eye view, Nattini illustrates the damnation of the 'violent against one's neighbor'. The Flegetonte stands out for its bright red color, the river of boiling blood, in which marauders and murderers are immersed in different degrees according to the gravity of the sin committed. On the shore, some centaurs are placed to watch them, armed with bows and arrows, who dart the damned who emerge more than necessary from the blood. Once again the pictorial space is divided into simple, clear and delineated zones. The upper part, the one furthest away from us, is reserved for the representation of the steep banks within which the Flegetonte flows. They are very steep rocks, divided into steps and completely deserted, whose course follows the diagonal that defines the banks in a repetition that creates order, but extremely unnatural. The 'shadows' are described as bodies of flesh and blood. Of this swarming of souls, Nattini manages to represent a different pose for each damned and, even if small in size, no one loses their anatomical definition.