Days before the succession of the 267th Pope, Leo XIV, President Donald Trump posted an AI generated image of himself in the role. who could have predicted that? Strangely enough, in 2021 I painted a portrait of Pope Boniface VIII, one of the most despised characters from Dante Alighieri’s ‘The Divine Comedy’, where, while almost all of the characters he met in ‘Inferno’ were figures from his history, Pope Boniface III was the sitting pope of the day, a thoroughly corrupt pope, selling heaven to who could line his pockets the most. Today, most references to Dante’s ‘Inferno’ are in horror movies depicting some version of hell, however, in the 15th Century, the original work was a scathing political attack on the rife and blatant corruption of the head of the Catholic Institution. It would be like posting a picture of the sitting president of the United States, the leader of the free world, as a musclebound ‘Jedi’ with a red light sabre.
My portrait of ‘Pope Boniface VIII’ will be on display at the ‘Deptford Lounge’ as part of this years ‘Deptford X festival’