Le Dante et Virgile apperçoivent des âmes assises à l’ombre d’un rocher, dans une attitude négligente

Flaxman’s illustration of canto 4 separates the sitting Belacqua from his fellow negligants who are leaning against the ledge of indolence. Flaxman appears to give these sluggish souls shadows, himself seemingly negligent of the distinction Dante has just made between his own corporeal self and all souls who cast no shadow—though those seeming shadows could, I suppose, be taken for the texture of the ledge itself, without regard to the indolent bunch “who in the shady place / Behind the rock were standing.” Set against Flaxman’s posing, slouching, standing figures is the one who “sat him down, / And with his arms did fold his knees about, / Holding his face between them downward bent” (4.101-05). This Belacqua, “who scarce his head uplifted” as he spoke, is another of those who repented only shortly before his death; his “lazy acts and broken words” reflect the indolence with which he will now await the redemption whose delay will equal the period of his habitual negligence on earth (4.114-17). In Réveil's engraving, Belacqua seems to glance our way, as when he spoke to Dante; in Piroli’s rendering, the same eye appears to express that earlier moment of total self-absorption.