Hell’s Beasts and Bodies: The Anatomy of Hell

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Behold the beast with the pointed tail, behold the one that makes the whole world stink! Its face was that of a just man and the rest of its torso was that of a serpent; it had two paws, hairy to the armpits; it had back and breast and both sides painted with knots and little wheels…in the emptiness all its tail was wriggling, twisting upward the poisoned fork that armed its tip like a scorpion’s.

—Inferno 17.1–27

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This striking image of Geryon was designed by Gustave Doré (1); this edition of the Inferno is the first to feature his engravings. Geryon is a giant hybrid monster that transports Dante and Virgil to the lowest circles of Hell. The number of hybrid creatures in Dante’s poem has been noted by scholars, who have suggested they were inspired by medieval bestiaries and Horace’s Ars Poetica. A printed bestiary of sorts, the Ortus Sanitatis (2), shows a woodcut illustration of a dragon, which may give us some view of how Geryon was imagined in the minds of medieval and Renaissance readers. Primarily a medical text on the healing properties of plants, there are also sections on animals (fish, birds and mammals), as well as exotic creatures such as manticores, hydras and half-human creatures. Hell’s monsters and devils were often viewed in terms of their allegorical meaning, but hybrid creatures such as Geryon additionally expressed Dante’s invention and virtuosity in visual description.

An early illustration of the eighth circle of Hell depicts the circle reserved for those who were perceived, from Dante’s Christian point of view, to have caused religious schism (3). The contrapasso, or punishment, was reflected in the division of the body, which is cut open to reveal this particular soul’s insides. Other souls in the twenty-eighth canto have missing body parts or are headless, making for one of the most gruesome and terrifying cantos of the Comedy. The display of the interior of the body seems almost medical, perhaps referring to medieval images of bloodletting or figures in books on anatomy. In fact, this anatomical interpretation of the canto resembles later treatises on anatomy, such as Vesalius, in which readers are privy to viewing the different layers of the human body (4). A further connection between Vesalius and the Comedy is the word “fabbrica,” variously translated as creation, fabric, construction and composition. Dante himself, Galileo, and other writers called the poem’s cosmos a “fabbrica,” perhaps relating the human body to the anatomy of Hell.