La barca de Aqueronte (The Boat of Charon or Charon's Boat)

[The Perilous Dreamer]

La barca de Aqueronte, translated in English as The Boat of Charon or Charon's Boat, is an 1887 oil on canvas and allegorical painting by award-winning Filipino painter Félix Resurrección Hidalgo.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Add Attachment Post Options La barca de Aqueronte (The Boat of Charon or Charon's Boat)

La Barca de Aqueronte is a Neoclassic-style painting based by Hidalgo on his reading of Dante's Inferno while in Italy. It is Hidalgo’s interpretation of damned souls journeying across the River Acheron towards the gates of hell or Hades. The protagonist of the painting is the boatman of classical mythology named Charon, who is depicted as the personification of the merciless harvester of condemned souls with "eyes of coal" glaring forebodingly from the shadows at the boarding commuters. Charon is presented at the right side of the canvas as a lone figure with a shroud. He was positioned in opposition to a red-colored sky. Charon’s facade is forbidding and obscured in the shadows and his oar is glinting like the rapier of a slayer. An offset on the left side of the image is the “diagonal disturbance” composed of plummeting and helpless unclothed bodies heading into Charon’s water vessel. The “diagonal movement” on the left-side of the painting is described to be subdued shades of pink and blue in “strong tension” with the right side of the work of art. This portion of the painting is the steady “solitary form” in black color going against the shimmering red backdrop. Measuring 80.65 cm x 108.59 cm, La barca de Aqueronte is a "companion piece" to Hidalgo’s other painting, La Laguna Estigia (The River Styx).