One of the major works of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, a great Filipino painter of the late 19th century, “La Barca de Aqueronte,” or “Charon’s Boat,” exemplifies Hidalgo’s neoclassical style of painting.
Inspired by the artist’s reading of Dante’s “Inferno,” the oil-on-canvas painting shows nude figures in agony or the souls of the damned as they are ferried across the River Acheron and into the underworld by boatman Charon, a solitary figure on the other side of the scene.
Together with its companion piece “La Laguna Estigia,” or “River Styx,” the painting won Hidalgo a gold medal in the 1887 Exposicion General de las Islas Filipinas in Madrid. In 1892, it received …
Keep on reading: ‘La Barca de Aqueronte’ by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, 1887