The Circle of Traitors: Dante's Foot Striking Bocca degli Abbate

The Circle of Traitors: Dante's Foot Striking Bocca degli Abbate by William Blake is a powerful example of the artist's late illustrative style, produced between 1820 and 1832. This detailed engraving belongs to Blake’s renowned series commissioned late in his career to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. The work captures the frigid, hellish landscape of Cocytus, the final circle reserved for traitors, where the damned are eternally frozen into a lake of ice. As a highly significant religious and literary project, Blake dedicated his final years to translating Dante’s epic vision into visual form, utilizing the high precision and dramatic contrast inherent in the print medium.

The scene focuses on the dramatic confrontation between the living poet and the soul of Bocca degli Abbati, a notorious political traitor whose head is inadvertently or intentionally struck by Dante's foot, initiating a heated exchange. Blake renders the figures with his characteristic emphasis on muscular, idealized forms, starkly contrasting the exposed, suffering heads of the sinners with the dynamic movement of the travelers. Although this specific moment centers on the male figures, the overall composition suggests the collective agony of the traitors, which includes women punished alongside men for betrayal of kin or country. This complex work, known for its intense psychological realism and meticulous technique, is part of the distinguished collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The creation of these Dante plates occupied the final decade of Blake’s life, serving as a powerful summation of his artistic theories on visionary art. While the project remained unfinished at the time of his death, the surviving prints are considered among the masterpieces of Romantic-era illustration. As important historical documents and influential visual interpretations of literature, high-quality prints and reproductions of this work, along with others from the series, are frequently made available through public domain archives, allowing researchers and enthusiasts worldwide to study Blake’s unique synthesis of poetry and engraving.