"Dor� has become fixed in many minds as something like the official illustrator of Dante. . . . The trouble is Dor� did not understand Dante. Nor was he alone in that: Botticelli tried to illustrate Dante and came up with sketches so curlycued and rhythmically lilting that they might do for midsummernight's dance of fairies. Both men did what they understood how to do without taking the happy trouble to understand Dante."

~ from John Ciardi's preface to Drawings for Dante's Inferno by Rico Lebrun.