Josue Rodriguez 

Art Anaylsis Paper 

           Paul Gustave Dore was a French artist, engraver, illustrator, and sculptor. Dore worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving. In 1890, Dore painted The Gluttons (Fig.1), appraised by Dante, Virgil, and Ciacco. Although the measurements are unidentifiable, Gustave Dore uses paints based on multiple oils on canvas. Observing the painting, I feel the impact of such an involvement in Doré’s illustrations of Dante. For example, one watches Dante emerge into a state of compassion once he notes the gluttons. Dante remains withdrawn and physically protected by Virgil in his area behind his guide; the position pulls the hero into himself and proposes an inward-looking mental state through this pose. Such withdrawal compares to Dante’s state of sensitivity. The center inherently remains upon the self through the need for subjective emotion, differentiated from the empathizer’s hunt for shallow understanding. 

          Colour is often the first thing to strike us about a painting. An element that plays a significant role throughout the painting is the symbolism of the Gluttons. The vile slush symbolizes the personal degradation that overindulges in food, drink, and otherworldly pleasures. At the same time, the inability to see others lying nearby represents the gluttons’ selfishness and coldness. Further supporting the vile slush environment is the monochromatic use Gustave Dore implements. Monochrome uses one color or different shades of a specific color. Showing the grey/black shades to manipulate the painting illustrates Dante’s hand within the image to make it appear as if it were to pull away from interaction with the scene, his wrist bent upward in strain, and his thumb pressed in tension against his index finger. The physical gesture impacts the illustration with a strong sense of perturbation. Tension in the posture translates into a cursory perception of Dante as internally and emotionally affected. Letting the viewer know Dante is the sympathizer who suffers from the gluttons instead of Dante as an empathizer who understands the circumstance of the gluttons.

          Yet, this small hand gesture is arguably the most important depiction of empathy in Doré’s twentieth plate. The motion exists as the first illustration in which Dante physically emerges from the protection or concealment of his robe after passage into Hell. Symbolically, the emergence of Dante’s hand from his sleeve reflects the poet’s emergence from any initial self-preoccupation to interaction with his external surroundings, an emergence from a physical representation of the shroud of his initial confusion to an understanding of this realm of the afterlife. Dante’s appearance inside the illustration assists such a translation. One finds no reshaping within the protagonist’s face that would manifest fear or sentiment; to the contrary, Doré outlines Dante with a serious expression, his head tilted toward him with the expanded arm of the individual Florentine nicknamed Ciacco. In this crevice between Ciacco’s amplified arm and Dante’s physical rise, Doré, in this way, captures the issuance of empathy. 

ILLUSTRATION

Fig. 1., The Gluttons, Gustave Dore, 1890, Canto VI