On the occasion of the 700 years since Dante Alighieri’s death, Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale return with a high-profile international event, the accessible exhibition “Inferno”.

First major accessible art exhibition dedicated to this theme, Inferno – curated by Jean Clair – will document a wide range of hell related iconography, from the Middle Ages to the present day, including more than 200 artworks from over 80 museums, public and private collections from Italy, the Vatican and across Europe. Among the masterpieces, wheelchair visitors will have the opportunity to admire works by Botticelli, Goya, Manet, Delacroix, Rodin, Cezanne, Richter. It is a particularly ambitious project that, focusing on the first of the three canticles of the Divine Comedy – which has always been the most loved and represented – will take visitors on an authentic visual journey into the depths of hell, as imagined by artists through the centuries.

The path will unfold through a full range of transliterations of hell: from the schematic medieval representations to the dramatic and exaggerated Renaissance and Baroque creations, from the tormented and suffered versions of Romanticism to the severe psychoanalytic interpretations of the 20^th century. Visitors will be accompanied by the words of the ‘Father of the Italian language’, Dante, who centered his greatest masterpiece on one main spiritual goal: to show humanity a path of liberation from the miseries and horrors towards a condition of happiness and salvation. Visitors will also experience the evolution in conceptions of hell from a more metaphorical and allegorical perspective: hell as the kingdom of Lucifer, hell as the place where the damned are forced to dwell eternally after death, hell represented as an infernal cone, up to the various transliterations of the experience of Hell on earth: wars, alienation and toxic work, the darkness of madness, the nightmare of extermination. This section will have a particularly strong impact on visitors!

Beyond the culmination of Evil, the accessible exhibition will find its conclusion with the evocation of the idea of ​​salvation, as offered by Dante in the last verse of the Inferno Canticle: “…And so we went out to see the stars again.”. A whole section is dedicated to the salvific impulse, proper not only to Christianity but a typical drive of humanity, to raise our gaze upwards – towards the universe, the infinite, the absolute, God. A spirituality also aimed at rebuilding a new humanity.

The accessible exhibition Inferno at the Scuderie del Quirinale is a unique opportunity for you to admire works of absolute historical and artistic value, from Sandro Botticelli’s Infernal Abyss – an admirable painting on parchment that illustrates the Divine Comedy – to the plaster model of Auguste Rodin’s monumental Gates of Hell, a narrative key to the exhibition and exceptionally on loan from the Musée Rodin in Paris. Infernohas begun just this month and will last until January, so you have plenty of time to admire it in person! Now, finally, with the easing of travel restrictions comes your opportunity to join this event of international scope.

Dust off your copy of The Divine Comedy and book an accessible trip to Italy with us! Visit our website https://www.romeanditaly.com/accessible now! We are waiting for you!

written by #stefanosghinolfi