#crapery

Dante and Virgil meet Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta depicts a scene from Dante Alghieri’s Inferno, the fourteenth century epic poem that tells of his journey through the rings of Hell, guided by the Ancient Roman poet Virgil.

Lycaon , a terrible governor of Arcadia who sowed terror in his region, wanted to test Jupiter's divinity by feeding him human flesh. Ovid recounts this story in Book I of the Metamorphoses (207-243): "(…) At first, Lycaon laughed at his pious prayers, then he said: 'I will see with a clear test whether this is a god or a mortal, and the truth will be beyond doubt' (…) he cut the throat of a hostage sent by the Molossian people with the edge of his sword and some of his limbs, and thus half-dead, he softened them in boiling water and roasted others over the fire. As soon as he served them at the table, I with avenging thunderbolt destroyed his house (…) his clothes turned into fur, his arms into paws: he became a wolf and retained the marks of his former form."