Art Nouveau, et al

One of my favorite classical art trends (I hesitate to call it a movement) is art nouveau, which was heavily influenced by Japanese art and design. Eventually, it became the dominant design trend for ads and poster art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at which point art deco (more influenced by Egyptian design) began to replace it.

But all in all, I just love art from that era, PERIOD. Late Neoclassicism, Symbolism, the Pre-Raphaelites, Impressionism, art nouveau and art deco, and the Academie painters like Bouguereau.

My favorite Golden Age illustrators and painters exemplify their respective genres--Maxfield Parrish (and incidentally, Parrish's most famous work, "Daybreak", features his nude daughter, around 10 at the time, leaning over her friend, who I think was 12 or 13 when it was painted), Alphonse Mucha, John Everett Millais, J.W. Waterhouse, Kate Greenaway, Koloman Moser, Wm. Holman Hunt, as well as slightly more obscure artists like Charles Maurin, Leon Frederic, Willy Pogany, Kay Nielsen (gorgeous work), Edmund Dulac, Mary Cicely Barker, and Charles Robinson.

There are also several early comic strip artists whose work I'm smitten with, primarily Windsor McCay.

It was a cheap genre paperback that piqued my curiosity about Dante's Inferno

Would that happen to be the science fantasy novel Inferno by Larry niven and Jerry Pournelle? I read it in high school, so I've forgotten much of it. Or perhaps a short story in Dan Simmons' Prayers to Broken Stones anthology, which has a story about a character named Vanni Fucci who'd been to hell and back and reveals to the world on late night TV that hell is, in fact, precisely as Dante described it?