The present article seeks to dig into Gustave Doré’s (1832-1883) vision of the Wood of the
Suicides from his illustrations of the Divine Comedy (d. 1861), establishing a comparison
between its critical reception, the works that have illustrated the chant over the centuries
and Doré’s works themselves. A goal here is to glimpse if negative criticism had any basis
beyond the prejudices of that period and, at the same time, to showcase the Romantic
vision that transformed the chant into something completely new in the XIXth century.
The sources prove how Doré, far from what critics intended to see in his works, approached
Dante Alighieri’s capolavoro with a neither correct or incorrect vision, but a vision that is
a part of his own time and sensitivity, with several inescapable connections with his contemporary
aesthetic views and theories.

Keywords: Gustave Doré; Dante Alighieri; Divine Comedy; Canto XIII; Pier della Vigna;
Romanticism; illustration.