“Sacrifice—it appears twice in the usual sense of ‘solemn offer of victims and gifts’ made to godheads. In a broader sense, it refers to any offer, real or symbolic, material or spiritual, made to God: ‘Even as thine own Angels of their will/ Make sacrifice to thee, Hosanna singing, /So many all men make the sacrifice of theirs’ (Purgatorio, Canto XI, 11). In particular, the vow is described as a sacrifice, insofar as its formulation obliges the man, standing before the divinity, to perform or not perform a given action, thus offering to God one’s own freedom of choice. It is Beatrice who clarifies to Dante what the importance of the vow is, as a spontaneous sacrifice and offering to God: ‘closing between God and man the compact, /A sacrifice is of this treasure made’ (Paradiso, Canto V, 29).”

Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

For more information on Pélagie Gbaguidi, see Wikipedia. For more on the artist’s body of work, see AWARE, the Archive of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions.