Microscope owned by King George III (1738-1820), England 1763

🇧🇷 Árvore gigante petrificada.

🇺🇸 Petrified giant tree.

#mudflood

The Map of Hell (La mappa dell'Inferno), between 1480 and 1490, by Sandro Botticelli, 33 cm × 47.5 cm, silverpoint, brown and black ink, tempera, Vatican Library

The Map of Hell by Botticelli – regularly called The Abyss of Hell or La Voragine dell’Inferno – is one of the parchments that the famous Italian painter designed to illustrate an edition of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The Map of Hell parchment shows the geography of Hell in the classical funnel section, which was used in later iconography.

Our most important early source on Botticelli's drawings is Giorgio Vasari, who wrote in 1550 in his Lives of the Artists that: "Having completed the work assigned to him, he returned at once to Florence, where, being whimsical and eccentric, he occupied himself with commenting on a certain part of Dante, illustrating the Inferno, and executing prints, over which he wasted much time, and, neglecting his proper occupation, he did no work, and thereby caused infinite disorder in his affairs."

Whereas previous artists had decorated manuscripts of The Divine Comedy as well, Botticelli’s drawings were very detailed and exceptionally faithful to Dante’s epic, full of gory details. The structure of hell is shaped like an inverted cone—like a funnel—which degrades with its nine circles to the center of the Earth, in which Lucifer is embedded. Many agree that it’s one of the most impressive of all Botticelli’s drawings, a multi-layered image of horror and suffering. The avaricious are forced to push heavy stones around for eternity, the wrathful and sullen are forever stuck in the muddy water of the Styx, the heretics are consumed by purifying fires. They are guarded on all sides by a multitude of devils.

The drawings travelled all over the world and exchanged hands many times, but started receiving most attention during the late 19th century. Today they are divided between the Vatican Library in Rome, where the Botticelli Map of Hell is kept, and Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett.