The second artwork for Inferno 5 depicts Paolo and Francesca in Hell.  This artwork illustrates the contrapasso for the lustful: “i peccator carnali, / che la ragion sommettono al talento” (“the carnal sinners, who subjugate reason to desire” [Inf. 5.38-9]). Lust, for Dante, is a misalignment of faculties, where passion rules over reason (Barolini 8). Unlike the sexual punishment depicted in moralistic literature, Dante desexualizes lust (Barolini 8). Instead, the lustful are swept up in an "infernal whirlwind" (“bufera infernal”) [Inf. 5.31], tossed about by wind, an arbitrary external force, in the same way their passions controlled them in life.

In this artwork, Francesca and other lovers, including figures like Semiramis and Helen, are locked in an eternal embrace within a windstorm. All the couples, even the "ancient ladies and knights" [Inf. 5.71], are depicted in this artwork as ordinary, in everyday clothing, facing the challenges of “Everyman” - what Dr. Lino Pertile describes as  human frailty and the weakness of willpower (Pertile 11). Francesca takes center stage, a reflection of how Dante revives her from historical obscurity, as she had been erased from records after her adulterous affair and murder by Giovanni Malatesta (Barolini). Her closed eyes in the artwork symbolize her continued blindness to their sin. This is a visual reference to Dante’s warning in the Convivio not to keep one’s eyes closed to reason: “la maggiore parte delli uomini vivono secondo senso e non secondo ragione … e la loro bontade, la quale a debito fine è ordinata, non veggiono, per ciò che hanno chiusi li occhi della ragione” (Most men live according to sense and not according to reason …  and they do not see their goodness, which is ordered to a due end, because they have closed the eyes of reason) [Conv.1.4.3].

In the poem as in the artwork, birds, such as doves and starlings, circle the condemned lovers, representing the uncontrolled force of desire, with the doves symbolizing Venus's lustful love (cupiditas), not the love of the Holy Spirit (caritas) (Iannucci 17). The pale red background of the artwork is a traditional signifier of Love, as well as Hell. 

In the bottom right corner of the drawing, Dante the Pilgrim faints, with Virgil catching him: “E caddi come corpo morto cade” (And I fell as a dead body falls) [Inf.5.142]. This dramatic moment marks Dante’s “first real encounter with sin” (Iannucci 98), where he, as both poet and character, struggles to maintain distance from Francesca’s seductive rhetoric (Iannucci 106). His swoon symbolizes the "death of the old poet and the birth of the new" (Iannucci 107), away from the lyric tradition of which he was a part, particularly that of Guido Cavalcanti, (Barolini 37) signaling Dante’s transformation toward a deeper understanding of love, one aligned with life and reason, rather than death.

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Barolini, Teodolinda. “Inferno 5: What’s Love Got to Do with It? Love and Free Will.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2018. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-5.

Iannucci, Amilcare A. “Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5).” Dante: Contemporary Perspectives, The University of Toronto Press, 2016, pp.94-112

Pertile, Lino. "Introduction to Inferno." The Cambridge Companion to Dante, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 67-90.