Inferno XXXI

Inferno XXXI

At first glance, the figures seem to stand together in a rocky landscape. Then the change in scale becomes unsettling. A pair of small, robed travelers passes among huge naked bodies, some bound in chains and partly sunk into a deep well. This is Botticelli's drawing for Inferno XXXI, where Dante and Virgil reach the giants at the boundary of Hell's eighth and ninth circles. The old shorthand “Canto XXXI” hides the essential word: this is Inferno, not a similarly numbered canto in Purgatory or Paradise.^[1][2]

The original sheet is held by Berlin's Kupferstichkabinett as inventory Botticelli, Inferno 31. Its current museum record credits Botticelli and dates it to about 1481–88. Metalpoint and brown pen on parchment describe the physical object; the drawing's lines make the chains, bodies and stone rim readable without the colour or heavy shadow of a painted scene. Botticelli uses the wide sheet to bring several moments of Dante's encounter together.^[1]

Contents

1. Giants That Dante First Mistakes for Towers
2. Finding the Two Travelers
3. Nimrod, Ephialtes and Antaeus in the Poem
4. A Wide Parchment Drawing

Berlin's long German title refers to the giants and their well at the edge of Malebolge. Although one phrase can be translated as a “battle of the giants,” the drawn figures are not fighting a pictured battle. The chains and change of level are what organize the image. The current object record supplies the date, support and dimensions in this fact box.^[1]

Giants That Dante First Mistakes for Towers

In Dante's canto, the travelers hear a horn and see shapes through the gloom. Dante initially takes them for towers. Virgil tells him they are giants, their lower bodies hidden by the depth of the well. The Princeton Dante Project traces that sequence before the poem names individual figures. Botticelli's sheet gives the viewer a related task: from a distance, we first register tall vertical bodies; only closer looking makes their faces, limbs and restraints distinct.^[2]

The central giants rise far above the travelers. One is seen from behind with an arm raised; another turns his broad back towards us with chains drawn across his torso. At lower left, a giant's upper body emerges near the edge of the pit, his head bowed. In the foreground, another chained figure faces outward from the well. The differences of pose prevent the giants from forming a simple row of identical guardians.^[1]

The chains are unusually clear. They cross shoulders, chests and waists, bind arms and run between metal rings. Their dark looping lines help the eye understand the enormous scale of the bodies. The figures have physical power but limited freedom of movement. A story that begins with Dante's mistaken impression of towers thus becomes an image of restrained bodies rather than secure stone architecture.^[1][2]

The rim of the well is just as important as the figures. It runs behind and between them, masking parts of their bodies and creating a strong horizontal break across the sheet. One giant seems sunk almost to the waist; another emerges higher. The varying depth keeps the viewer from treating all the bodies as standing on the same ordinary ground.^[1]

Finding the Two Travelers

Dante and Virgil are small robed figures among the giants. They appear more than once as the journey advances across the scene. At the left, a pair stands near a bound figure. Towards the middle and right, smaller pairs gesture, approach and turn again. Their repetition is a way to show a sequence of actions in one drawing, not an indication that several Dantes are present in Hell at the same time.^[1][2]

Their scale makes the poem's encounter feel bodily. Even a giant's hand or chain link is large beside them. Botticelli does not need to make the travelers look terrified through exaggerated expressions; the comparison of sizes supplies the danger. It also gives the viewer a practical route through a composition that would otherwise be dominated by giant torsos.^[1]

The Princeton summary moves from Nimrod to Ephialtes and then to Antaeus, who is unbound and carries the two travelers down. Those names matter to the poem. The available Berlin catalogue does not provide a position-by-position key for this sheet, so not every drawn figure can be labelled securely from the museum record alone. We can still see the main contrast: chained giants occupy much of the well, while a bending giant at the right helps mark the move downward.^[1][2]

Follow the small figures towards that right-hand edge. Their bodies are vulnerable to the giant's reach, but his motion also makes the passage possible. The drawing turns a frightening scale difference into a means of travel. In the poem Antaeus lowers them to the frozen ninth circle; in the image the bent body makes the transition from one level to another visible.^[1][2][3]

Berlin's institutional account reads the action at the sheet's right-hand rim as the start of a movement continued in the next Inferno drawing. There the giant has set the travelers down on the ninth-circle ice, yet his legs remain visible above them. Botticelli therefore carries an action across consecutive sheets as well as repeating Dante and Virgil within this one. The link depends on looking at both drawings; this page alone shows the approach to the descent.^[1][4]

Nimrod, Ephialtes and Antaeus in the Poem

The Princeton Dante Project identifies Nimrod as the first giant Dante meets. His horn and unintelligible speech are tied to the confusion of languages. Next comes Ephialtes, held by a chain and associated with a challenge to the gods. Dante asks about Briareus, but Virgil directs him towards Antaeus, the unbound giant able to lower them into the final circle.^[2]

An older, detailed account by Herbert Horne sees six giants spaced around the rim and describes the horn hanging by a chain at the neck of the figure he identifies as Nimrod. That reading supplies a more specific visual route than the brief current object label. It also needs to be held at its proper level: Horne is interpreting a complex drawing, and neither the horn nor the poem's sequence automatically gives a secure name to every partly hidden torso. The horn is especially useful because it joins sound to a visual motif. Dante hears it before he understands what he sees; a reader of Botticelli's silent image can find the instrument only after making out the giant's body.^[5]

The University of Texas's Danteworlds commentary likewise places the giants on the inner edge of the eighth circle, overlooking the ninth. It explains the contrast between bound Ephialtes and Antaeus, who can act. This textual sequence helps a reader make sense of Botticelli's crowded drawing. It should not be used as a licence to assign every torso a name when the sheet's surviving public record does not do so.^[1][3]

The giants are drawn with human anatomy at a scale that exceeds the human figures around them. Their shoulders, backs, hands and bent knees are carefully articulated. The result is more disturbing than a shapeless monster would be: the bodies are recognizable, while their size makes them incompatible with the landscape and the travelers' ordinary expectations.^[1]

Look at the giant seen from behind near the centre. The chain circles his chest and crosses his lower back, while the arm lifted beside him interrupts the relatively level rim of the well. That single pose links the vertical force of a body to the horizontal band of the pit. Near him, the travelers remain reduced to a few dark strokes of cloak and gesture. The contrast explains the scene without needing a label on the image.^[1]

A Wide Parchment Drawing

Berlin gives the sheet size as 32.1 × 47 centimetres. The landscape format accommodates several large figures across the well and the smaller movement of the travelers behind them. Unlike a narrow portrait format, it gives Botticelli space to alternate close views of giants with gaps through which Dante and Virgil can be found.^[1]

The current museum record specifies metalpoint and brown pen on parchment. In the official photograph, some body contours and chains are more emphatic than the faint rock edges around them. The viewer's attention shifts between strongly worked bodies and lightly suggested terrain. The sheet reads as a drawing in which marks are visible, rather than an illusionistic painting that conceals how its forms were made.^[1]

This is one image within Botticelli's extended illustration of Dante's Divine Comedy. The same cycle includes a later sheet for Inferno XXXIV, with Lucifer at Hell's centre. The giants here are part of the approach to that final place; they are not Lucifer himself. Keeping the cantos separate allows the scale of each scene to be understood on its own terms.^[1][3]

Return to the smallest robed figures before looking again at the giant bodies. The drawing changes when their path becomes legible. What first seems a catalogue of chained anatomy becomes the story of a passage: a mistaken view of towers, a confrontation with restrained power, and a descent made possible by one enormous figure's movement.^[1][2]

References

1. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, “La Divina Commedia, Inferno XXXI: Schlacht der Giganten – Pozzo dei Giganti,” inv. Botticelli, Inferno 31, current collection record updated 12 August 2026, accessed 29 September 2026 View source.
2. Princeton Dante Project, “Summary of Inferno XXXI,” canto summary, accessed 29 September 2026 View source.
3. University of Texas at Austin, Danteworlds, “Circle 9, cantos 31–34,” commentary on giants and the passage from the eighth to ninth circles, accessed 29 September 2026 View source.
4. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, “Botticelli Featuring Dante,” institution-authored exhibition story on Google Arts & Culture, accessed 29 September 2026 View source.
5. Herbert P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi, Commonly Called Sandro Botticelli (1908), pp. 210–11 (PDF pp. 360–61), his visual reading of six giants and Nimrod's chained horn; consulted 1 October 2026 View source.
6. Image credit. Sandro Botticelli, Inferno XXXI, about 1481–88, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. Botticelli, Inferno 31. Photo: Philipp Allard. Public Domain Mark 1.0. View the full-size museum image View source · View source · View source.

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