Paolo e Francesca da Rimini

The story of Paolo and Francesca is recorded in Dante’s Divina Commedia (Inferno: Canto V). There was some currency for artistic treatments of the subject. Ary Scheffer exhibited his famous painting at the Paris Salon in 1835 and Gustave Doré’s engraved illustrations, published in 1866, helped popularise the story for a Victorian audience. Solomon’s interest in Dante might have stemmed from his youthful contact with Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose watercolour on the story of Paolo and Francesca was completed in 1855. Each of these artists show the lovers swirling around in Hell, buffeted by 'the infernal storm, eternal in its rage', as Dante describes it. The couple were doomed to this fate having been found in an adulterous act by Francesca’s husband.

In the manner adopted in his post-1872 career, Solomon shows only the heads of the lovers, He suggests the buffeting winds by vigorous marks swirling around them, forming their garments as well as the shadowy infernal landscape. Their facial expressions tell of their painful and exhausting love which has become a kind of torture to them. Paolo’s eyes are raised to a vision that appears (top left) of the three crosses of Calvary, Christ’s between those of the two crucified thieves. The expression is that of one who seeks salvation in Christian sacrifice and perhaps regret at supplanting a higher ideal of love for a baser, corporeal one. As such, the drawing is a deeply personal document, an interpretation of a story of doomed desire, of transgression and victimisation.

Works on this subject were included in the Jewish Art and Antiquities exhibition held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1906 (as cat. 983) and in the Bailie Gallery Memorial exhibition in the winter of 1905-06 (as cat. 121). In the inscription of the present drawing, Paolo’s name is spelt incorrectly (as Paulo).

We are grateful to Colin Cruise for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.