Illustration of Lucifer in the first fully illustrated print edition of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Woodcut for Inferno, canto 33. Pietro di Piasi, Venice, 1491. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less. (Image Courtesy Chiswick Chap, for Wikipedia).
Lucifer has in his mouth, Ivda, Bruto and Casio, two that betrayed Caesar.
Note the artist rendered the fact that Dante and Virgil have passed Lucifer, at the centre of the Earth and see him upside down.
Note the artist rendered the fact that Dante and Virgil have passed Lucifer, at the centre of the Earth and see him upside down.
In Dante's Divina Commedia, the Hell is a conical cavity reaching to the centre of the Earth. At the apex of the cone, there is Lucifer. After Dante and his guide Virgil have passed Lucifer at the bottom of the Hell, and are continuing their journey, Dante looks back and sees Lucifer upside down. And Virgil explains that they have passed the center of the Earth, which is pulling the weights (a clear statement on gravitation):
... tu passasti 'l punto
al qual si traggon d'ogne parte i pesi.
E se' or sotto l'emisperio giunto
ch'e` contraposto a quel che la gran secca
coverchia, e sotto 'l cui colmo consunto
fu l'uom che nacque e visse sanza pecca:
tu hai i piedi in su picciola spera
che l'altra faccia fa de la Giudecca.
…thou then didst pass the point to which
all gravities from every part are drawn.
And now thou art arrived beneath the hemisphere
opposed to that which canopies the great dry land
and underneath whose summit was consumed the
Man, who without sin was born and lived; thou
hast thy feet upon a little sphere, which forms the
other face of the Judecca.
[The Inferno, Edited by Israel Gollancz, 1903]
Dante and Virgil commenced their ascent to the other side of the Earth, toward the Antipodes, where they find the Purgatory, a conical hill, rising out of the ocean at a point diametrically opposite to Jerusalem.
More at From Rome to the Antipodes: The Medieval Form of the World, International Journal of Literature and Arts, 2013, 1(2), 16-25.
