the wood of suicides

The Wood Of Suicides - Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides is a pcil, ink and watercolor on paper artwork by the brilliant poet, painter and printer William Blake (1757–1827). It was completed between 1824 and 1827 and depicts a passage from the Inferno of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).

The work is part of a series that Blake created before his death in August 1827. It was held at the Tate Gallery, London.

The Wood Of Suicides

Blake was commissioned in 1824 by his brother, the painter John Linnell (1792–1882), to create illustrations based on Dante's poem. Blake was in his 60s, yet he created 100 watercolors on the subject of "sick two weeks in bed".

Gustave Dore The Wood Of Suicides 1866

He sets this work on an image from one of the circles of hell depicted in the Inferno (Circle VII, Ring II, Canto XIII), where Dante and the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) in a forest mocked by harpies. —with wings and ugly wings in the sense of a fat belly with the shape of a human head and female breasts.

The harpies in Dante's version feed on the leaves of oak trees to cause carnage. At the time Canto XIII (or The Wood of Suicides) was written, suicide was considered by the Catholic Church to be the same as murder, and contrary to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill.", and many theologians believed that it was one and the same. . it is worse than murder, because it is a rejection of God's gift of life. Dante expresses this by placing murderers in the seventh circle of hell, where evil is punished, including murderers, torturers, blasphemers, sodomites, and exploiters.

Dante describes a forest full of harpies, where the act of murder is punished by imprisoning the perpetrator in a tree, thus causing eternal death and retribution. to the soul in eternity as a member of undead, and prey to harpies. Also, the spirit can only speak and grieve when its tree is broken or damaged as punishment for choosing life to express grief. Finally, in a symbolic act of punishment, each of the blessed and brought back with his body from the Last Judgment, those condemned to murder will no longer hold their bodies but hang by their feet, because they are dead already. . them in their last act of life and in remembering those they killed themselves.

Blake's painting shows Dante and Virgil walking through a glade in a forest where Dante tears a stick from a bloody tree, and is shocked to hear the words parting, "Why should I close my eyes? -love in your chest?"

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In Dante's poem, the tree contains the ghost of Pietro della Vigna (1190–1249), an Italian lawyer and diplomat, and minister and secretary of the Emperor Frederick II (1194 -1250). Pietro was a wise man who rose to become an advisor to the king. However, his success was disputed by other members of Frederick II's court, and it was accused that he was more important than the emperor and that he was a subject of the pope. Frederick throws Pietro into prison, and cuts out his eyes. In revenge, Pietro kills himself by banging his head against the prison wall. He is one of the four murderers named in Canto XIII,

Harpies in the Forest of Suicides, engraved by Gustave Doré in 1861, depicts the same canto as the Inferno.

Although Pietro does not show his ignorance to the travelers in Dante's novel, he does commit the act of murder, asking (as noted by historian Wallace Fowlie) whether it is better to submit to chastisemt and harm or take his own life. .

In Canto XIII, Pietro says, “I hold the two keys of Frederick's heart / To lock and unlock / and I know / To restore them in a beautiful image.

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Blake shows several figures of men locked in oak trees in the foreground. To the right, a male figure is seated and wearing a crown. A female figure mounts and becomes a tree to the left of Dante and Virgil. This image may be derived from Dante's reference to La Meretrice, or vy, which Pietro surrenders in his downfall.

Examining Blake's use of camouflage in the work, art historian Kathle Lunde observes, "The trees in the pictures appear as if they were drawn from two of the first pictures in one thought. Now we see the trees, we see people."

Three large harpies hang at the feet of the pilgrims, and they are depicted by Blake as bird-like creatures that, in the words of art historian Kevin Hutchings, "act as symbolic representations of the act of killing and rejection of this sin. of the divine human body."

Their appearance is like a human, except for their pointed beak, and their body is like an owl, and they are equipped with claws, sharp wings, and female breasts. Blake refers to them as faithful to Dante's description in 13:14–16: "Their pnons are broad, in human form / Their necks and faces, with tails when / They sit and weep in the mysterious tree."

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In March 1918, Wood of the Self-Murderers was sold by the Linnell estate, through Christie's, for £7,665 to the British National Art Collections Fund. The Art Collections Fund presented the painting to the Tate in 1919.