Book Title: Dante's Inferno; Translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M.A. from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of M. Gustave Doré.

Author: Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

Image Title: The Lion

Scripture Reference:

• Jeremiah 5 (further images / scripture text)

Description: The dawn spoken of in the previous lines, which had filled Dante with hope and joy, is chased into the background by an imposing, overgrown landscape and a lion ‘with his head held aloft and hunger-mad.’ Dante faces the lion with bowed head and clasped hands, his diminutive stature and anxious posture communicating the fear which the lion has driven him to. The lion is almost certainly an allegory for pride or arrogance and likely derives from the lion mentioned in Jeremiah 5:6. The engraver, Héliodore Pisan (1822-1890), has placed his signature at the bottom right.

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