“The oil painting, Count Ugolino, had been lifted from a gallery in Turin, northern Italy, in December 2001.
Goya’s work – which evokes a gory episode from Dante’s Inferno – was retrieved during a raid on a flat near the Montenegrin capital of Pogdorica.
Two brothers were detained. The painting had been insured for £277,000 after being bought for £140 in 1999.
At the time, it was bought as an anonymous work, but experts later attributed it to Goya.
The work – which is roughly as large as an A4 sheet – refers to one of the most shocking tales from medieval Italy.
In his Divine Comedy, Dante told the story of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, who, according to his story, ended up eating the flesh of his children after all the male members of the family were starved to death by Ugolino’s enemies. —BBC News, June 15, 2005
Contributed by Susan Wegner
“Stolen Goya Found in Montenegro”
Eternal Cool Project, “Inferno: The Rap” (2005)
“This is a unique, never before done approach to Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. Lyrics written in the 14th Century, as translated in the mid 1800s by H Cary, are rapped by MicPwr, over a music track composed by Mr Moe. It is a powerful depiction of a medieval Hell, performed by uban artists.” —CD Baby
“Report: 92 Percent Of Souls In Hell There On Drug Charges”
“HELL. A report released Monday by the Afterlife Civil Liberties Union indicates that nine out of 10 souls currently serving in Hell were condemned on drug-related sins. ‘Hell was created to keep dangerous sinners off the gold-paved streets of Heaven,’ ACLU spokesman Barry Horowitz said. ‘But lately, it’s become a clearing-house for the non-evil souls that Heaven doesn’t know how to deal with.'” —The Onion, October 12, 2005
“Rome Journal; An Inferno of Vehicles Expands a City’s Circle of Suffering”
“On a remarkably pleasant night in early August, Patrizia Dolcini, a 44-year-old hotel worker, was jolted from her sleep by a series of violent explosions just outside her first-floor bedroom window in one of Rome’s most upscale areas.
Ms. Dolcini ran outside, where others were gathering, as a frightening scene unfolded: more than a dozen parked motor scooters had burst into flames, transforming an entire intersection into an inferno. The blaze engulfed a nearby tree and leapt five stories in the air. Black smoke billowed above this city’s fairy-tale skyline. From a few blocks away, there came another explosion. Then, from a different direction, another.” [. . .] –Brian Wingfeld, The New York Times, September 5, 2005
