Abstract

The paper analyses the sequentiality of Dante's narrative in Inferno VIII-XI, and its pictorial translation by Sandro Botticelli. It intends to show the major intermedial differences of expression and their theological consequences. As a result, it argues that Botticelli's 'undramatic' representation of the journey eliminates the tropological meaning of Dante's poem and passes over the complexity of the compensational system. The drawings rather stress the organisational model and the longue durée of man's representation of hell.