What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Flemish painter Jan van der Straet, known by his Italian name “Stradanus,” completed a series of illustrations of the Divine Comedy between 1587 and 1588, currently preserved at the Laurentian Library in Florence. This illustration refers to Canto VIII, where the wrathful and slothful are punished. Stradanus combines elements of Italian Mannerism, such as painstaking attention to detail, with distinctive Flemish traits like the physiognomy of the demonic figure steering Dante’s boat, who shows a deeply harrowing expression.
