The Barque of Dante
| The Barque of Dante | |
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| Artist | Eugène Delacroix |
| Year | 1822 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 189 cm × 246 cm (74 in × 95 in) |
| Location | Louvre, Paris |
The Barque of Dante (French: La Barque de Dante), sometimes known as Dante and Virgil in Hell (Dante et Virgile aux enfers), is the first major painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, and one of the works signalling a shift in the character of narrative painting from Neo-Classicism towards the Romantic movement. It was completed for the opening of the Salon of 1822 and currently hangs in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
The painting is loosely based on fictional events taken from canto eight of Dante’s Inferno. A leaden, smoky mist and the blazing City of the Dead form the backdrop against which the poet Dante endures a fearful crossing of the River Styx. He is steadied by the learned poet of antiquity Virgil as they plough through waters heaving with tormented souls.
The arrangement of figures is for the most part compliant with the tenets of the cool, reflective Neo-Classicism that had dominated French painting for nearly four decades. There is a group of central upright figures, and a rational arrangement of subsidiary figures, all in horizontal planes, and observing studied poses.
The Barque of Dante was an artistically ambitious work, and although the composition is conventional, the painting in some important respects broke unmistakably free of the French Neo-Classical tradition.
The smoke to the rear and the fierce movement of the garment in which the oarsman Phlegyas is wrapped indicate a strong wind, and most of the individuals in the painting are facing into it. The river is choppy and the boat is lifted to the right, a point at which it is twisted toward the viewer. The party is driven to a destination known to be yet more inhospitable, by an oarsman whose sure-footed poise in the storm suggests his familiarity with these wild conditions. The city behind is a gigantic furnace. There is neither comfort nor a place of refuge in the painting’s world of rage, insanity and despair.
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