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Antaeus Setting Down Dante and Virgil in the Last Circle of hell pen and watercolour (NGV 27) Felton Bequest, 1920 1012-3 National Gallery of Victoria Inferno XXXI, 112-43. After their encounter with Ephialtes the poets go further on and come upon Antaeus who was invincible as long as he remained in contact with the earth, but who was finally conquered by Hercules. Virgil asks Antaeus to set the poets down in the last circle. Here Blake parallels Dante's imagery of the Carisenda, one of the leaning towers in Bologna, as seen when a cloud is going over it, and also the imagery of a ship's mast in his rigid right arm. |