Dante’s Inferno is a collection of digital artworks generated from Inferno Canto I and Canto VI of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

The Divine Comedy is the tale of the journey of a soul toward God. Inferno is Dante’s journey through Hell characterized by a sense of anguish, depression, loneliness and pain.

Inferno is also a sort of horror movie where the reader is driven to spectacularly gory scenes that provoke negative feelings ranging from fear to desperation. Dante himself is often fainting in this spiritual demanding journey.

The exact interpretation of the Divine Comedy is still in large  part a mystery. In this consist also the great fascination of this masterpiece.

Artists in the course of times had tried to illustrate the Divine Comedy. Particularly relevant are illustrations of the Divine Comedy by Gustav Dorè and Salvador Dalì. MathemArt has tried to walk on the footsteps of these giants to generate scenes from Canto I and Canto VI of Divine Comedy Inferno, using Artificial Intelligence techniques.

Images are directly produced by tercets of Inferno Canto I and Canto VI, like this on Cerberus:

“Cerbero, fiera crudele e diversa,

con tre gole caninamente latra

sopra le genti che quivi è sommersa,

Li occhi ha vermigli, la barba unta e atra,

e ‘ l ventre largo, unghiate le mani;graffia li spiriti, iscoia ed  isquadra.”

(Inferno, VI, 13-33)

The results are astounding. The overall style from Dorè sometimes may be glimpsed but even abstract  scenes – detached partially from the text – convey,  unbelievably, the sense of desperation and horror of Dante’s Inferno. Maybe generated art will contribute to solve the mystery of the Divine Comedy

For this collection we would like to thank Professors Carlo Faedo and Giovan Carlo Miniati who transmitted to us the love for Dante and Dorothy L. Sayers for her masterpiece English translation of the Divine Comedy.