
In Tate Britain
Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- William Blake 1757–1827
- Medium
- Graphite, ink and watercolour on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 373 × 527 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the Art Fund, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the Art Fund 1919
- Reference
- N03360
Display caption
Gallery label, February 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Catalogue entry
N03360 The Laborious Passage along the Rocks 1824–7 [A00005-A00011; N03351-N03370; T01950-T01956; complete]
N 03360 / B 812 46
Pencil, pen and watercolour 373×527 (14 11/16×20 3/4)
Inscribed ‘HELL Canto 24’ in ink b.c. and ‘Canto 24 V 30 [?]’ in pencil b.r. and, on reverse in pencil, ‘N40 next at p 75’ t.c., ‘Hell Canto 24 v 60’ b.l. and ‘69’ t.l., all turned through a right-angle
Watermarked ‘WELGAR 1796’ Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the National Art-Collections Fund, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the National Art-Collections Fund 1919
PROVENANCE As for N03351
EXHIBITED Hamburg and Frankfurt 1975 (210, repr.)
LITERATURE Rossetti 1863, p.219 no.101r1 ors1, and 1880, p.230 no.123r1 or s1; Roc 1953, pp.100–1 no.46, repr.; Klonsky 1980, p.148, colour pl.48; Butlin 1981, p.570 no.812 46; Gizzi 1983, p.126 repr.
This is an illustration to Inferno XXIV, 19–36: Virgil, having led Dante past a shattered bridge, helps Dante up the series of massive boulders that separate the pit of the hypocrites from the seventh pit in the eighth circle, that devoted to the thieves. There is a second, upright treatment of this subject in the British Museum (Butlin 1981, no.812 45, repr. Roe 1953, pl.45, Klonsky 1980, pl.47 and Gizzi 1983, p.125). This may illustrate the slightly later passage, lines 37–63, where the cliff becomes still steeper.
Published in:
Martin Butlin, William Blake 1757-1827, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
Explore
- literature and fiction(3,162)
-
- characters(457)
- literature (not Shakespeare)(2,296)
- actions: postures and motions(9,094)
-
- climbing(69)
- man(10,478)
- mythical, religious, fictional(263)
-
- Hell(93)
- Judaeo-Christian imagery(859)
-
- Hell(252)
You might like
-
William Blake Plutus
1824–7 -
William Blake The Inscription over the Gate
1824–7 -
William Blake The Ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory
1824–7 -
William Blake The Hypocrites with Caiaphas. Verso: Sketch of a Stooping Figure
1824–7 -
William Blake The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers
1824–7 -
William Blake Homer and the Ancient Poets
1824–7 -
William Blake The Primaeval Giants Sunk in the Soil
1824–7 -
William Blake The Simoniac Pope
1824–7 -
William Blake The Devils, with Dante and Virgil by the Side of the Pool
1824–7 -
William Blake Cerberus
1824–7 -
William Blake Dante Striking Against Bocca degli Abati
1826–7, reprinted 1968 -
After John Flaxman Encounter with the Centaurs
1807 -
After John Flaxman The Flaming Gulph
1807 -
After John Flaxman Tomb of Anastasius
1807