“The Other Side, the neighbor and partner of South Utica’s popular Café Domenico, is currently hosting a ‘damned’ good show: a series of paintings depicting scenes from the Inferno, the first volume of the celebrated trilogy by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.
The poem is organized into 34 cantos or chapters, and it describes the (fictional) journey Dante took through hell, his first stop on a three-volume tour of eternity that eventually landed him in paradise.
Bob Cimbalo, one of the region’s most accomplished artists, created one very engaging painting for each of Dante’s 34 Inferno cantos — an impressive artistic feat now on display for the first time in many years.
[. . .]
In Cimbalo’s depiction, the leaden cloaks of the hypocrites are strikingly stiff and angular, which to my eye immediately makes them look like they’re fashioned of metal— in contrast to other depictions of this scene, including one by the famous illustrator Gustave Doré, whose cloaks of these damned look much more like ordinary cloth. In Cimbalo’s depiction, you immediately sense the weight they’re carrying, even before you know what his painting is meant to depict.” –Phil Bean, Observer Dispatch, March 16, 2020
