Illuminating Botticelli’s Chart of Hell

This essay explores Botticelli’s Chart of Hell which represents an ingenious interpolation of the first canticle. The chart is one of ninety illustrations which the artist (1445–1510) executed for a lavish codex of the Commedia commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Parker argues that one can read the map as one does the poem albeit in a distinctly different way. The essay seeks to provide a different perspective on the chart, one that explores Botticelli’s visual remediation of a complex poetic narrative and how the artist literalizes that which is allusive.