Eleven years after purchasing his last Revelation subject, Osmaston acquired this illustration to Dante's Inferno, possibly the last work by Stock to enter his collection since he died two years later. Dante and Virgil are seen encountering Lucifer in the Giudecca, the last ring of the ninth and lowest circle of Hell (Canto XXXIV). A terrifying winged giant, submerged waist-deep in the icy waters of Cocytus, he has three heads in the mouths of which he mangles the spirits of Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius, all prime examples of treachery.

The drawing reinvokes the mood of the apocalyptic Revelation subjects of 1902-10 (see lots 3, 10 and 70), and possibly indicates a revival of Stock's feeling for Blake. Although he had exhibited a Dantesque theme as early as 1879, it was not an illustration to the Divine Comedy; and his interest in the poem now may reflect the fact that Blake's great series of designs to it, commissioned by John Linnell in 1824, were sold at Christie's in 1918 and published for the first time in their entirety in 1922. Blake's drawings include the encounter with Lucifer in Canto XXXIV (now National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne).