Dante and Virgil Passing over the Frozen Lake of Traitors

In a scene from Dante’s Inferno (canto XXXII, lines 79-96), Dante and Virgil walk on the frozen Sea of Traitors in the ninth and last circle of Hell. Here, traitors are imprisoned up to their necks in ice. Dante stops to talk to a notorious Florentine traitor, Bocca degli Abati, whom—by accident or design—he had just kicked in the face. Virgil stands in the background among the sea of heads, waiting for Dante to finish his conversation.The drawing, sketched in pen and ink with shadows created by brown wash, was made by Paggi in preparation for a 1591 painting (now lost) sent to Pietro de’ Medici in Spain in 1592. It is squared in black chalk for transfer to the canvas, and the composition is recorded in another sheet by Paggi in the Courtauld Gallery. Both drawings were formerly attributed to Luca Cambiaso, Paggi’s erstwhile master.