There is always hope as long as there is beauty. This is the main theme of my first full-length novel, Oblivion Black (now on Kindle Vella). It’s about and artist and his muse and how they both survive by clinging to beauty in the face of absolute darkness.
Classical and neoclassical art is some of the most stirring and beautiful art humanity has ever created. It’s also blatantly sensual and erotic, like the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
Dante and Virgil is an 1850 oil on canvas painting by the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. It is on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The painting depicts a scene from Dante’s Divine Comedy, which narrates a journey through Hell by Dante and his guide Virgil.
In the scene the author and his guide are looking on as two damned souls are entwined in eternal combat. One of the souls is an alchemist and heretic named Capocchio. He is being bitten on the neck by the trickster Gianni Schicchi, who had used fraud to claim another man’s inheritance.
It was Bougereau’s third and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to win the coveted Prix de Rome, even though he had submitted a work that he knew would appeal to the judges. He did however succeed in his efforts later in the year when Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes won the consolation second prize of the year.
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