Purgatory Canto 7

Description of Art: Purgatory Canto 7 captures the descent into the fifth terrace of purgation—a realm where the avaricious and the prodigal endure humbling pressure—and Dalí transforms this moment into a vision of ironic grace and spiritual reversal. The palette is suffused with pale golds, soft rose-tones, and gentle aquamarines, colors that drift across the scene like the hush before transformation. Light seems to lie lightly upon the figures as though waiting for acknowledgment.

At the centre a group of figures lies prostrate, face-down upon the ground—an image of submission and repentance. Their forms are elongated, rendered with Dalí’s crisp engraving lines, yet their contours melt softly into the atmosphere, as though their attachment to the world is dissolving. Nearby, the figure of Dante stands—upright, humble, and poised in quiet observation. His form retains solidity within a field of dissolving edges, symbolizing the pilgrim’s progression from judgment toward understanding.

The landscape around them is both minimal and charged. Rock formations become ridges of light; columns recede into haze; the ground swells gently like waves caught beneath a calm sky. These shifting features mirror the canto’s lesson: the soul’s rocky terrain becomes fluid, the weight of possession softens, and the path upward becomes visible. Dalí balances the surreal with the resonant: the scene feels real in its emotional specificity yet charged with symbolic resonance.

In this work Dalí distils the essence of Canto 7: pride in possession gives way to humility in motion; the soul subsides into the earth before it can rise into light. The image is at once austere and luminous, a suspended moment of transition where attachment falls away and the way forward opens.