Corot took his subject from the first canto of Dante's Inferno, when the Italian poet encounters three savage beasts deep in a forest. Dante then meets the ancient poet Virgil, who offers to be his guide through Purgatory and Hell. Corot presented this painting at the Salon of 1859. Rediscovering it in his studio many years later, he wrote to a friend, "Why, it's superb; I can hardly imagine that I myself did that!" He unsuccessfully offered to sell it to the French state in 1874. The Boston collector Quincy Adams Shaw purchased it in 1875, after Corot's death, and donated it to the Museum of Fine Arts.

---