Paolo and Francesca da Rimini in Dante's Hell

This is the first painting we can firmly credit to Nicola Monti, made in Florence in 1810 when he was 30, for a merchant in Livorno named Luigi Fauquet. The subject is the most famous love story in Dante, from the fifth canto of the Inferno: Paolo and Francesca, lovers killed by her husband, condemned to the second circle of Hell where the souls of the lustful are driven forever on a dark wind. Francesca tells the traveling Dante how they fell, reading together the tale of Lancelot, and Dante is so overcome that he faints. Monti painted it as the Romantic taste for Dante was rising across Europe. The Uffizi bought the picture in 2021, for the 700th anniversary of the poet's death.