Gustave Doré – Canto 5 linea 105: “love brought us one death, Caina waits the soul, who split our life.”
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8789/8789-h/8789-h.htm#link5
I found this image in Project Gutenberg’s Vision of Hell, an eBook which includes the Inferno alongside the illustrated works of Gustave Doré. It’s found in the 5th Canto section of the work. The inscription below the piece is a quote from line 105 of the Canto, and it reads: “Love brought us one death: Caina waits the soul who split our life.” This alludes to the murder of Francesca de Rimini and her lover Paolo by Francesca’s husband, the older brother of Paolo. He is destined for Caina, the 9th circle of hell.
The work illustrates the whirlwind of souls which Dante finds in the second circle, where the carnal sinners, “who subject reason to lust” (38) are doomed to wail among the howling winds. Many notable figures are doomed to this fate: Cleopatra, and central figures in the Trojan war, Paris and Helen. Virgil points out “more than a thousand [other] shades” (67) in addition to those he names. In Doré’s work you can see two souls highlighted amid a hurricane of others, romanticized to illustrate their pain and sadness. Francesca and Paolo, who are doomed to spend eternity in the second circle. Paolo’s head leans back as in agony, and Francesca turns toward the poets to tell her story: that of two poor souls who were driven by love and lust to commit sin.
Dante says “After I had heard those wounded souls, I bowed my face, and held it low” (109), a position illustrated in Doré’s etching. Dante is overcome by emotion and pity, both encapsulated by his pose in the painting, looking down and leaning to one side. As Francesca tells the tale of her love and lust, Paolo’s wails and tears evoke so much emotion in Dante that he faints, “as a dead body falls,” (142) totally overcome by pity.
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