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The Divine Comedy – Salvador Dali

To celebrate the 700th birthday of the Italian poet Dante Alighiere, Salvador Dali was commissioned in 1951 to create a set of illustrations for Dante's masterpiece, La Commedia Divina. Dali produced a masterpiece of his own, and the set of watercolours and woodcuts with their range of artistic styles demonstrates that Dali was one of the greatest artists of any century.

There was once an excellent site with all the illustrations and their relationships to the text, but it has unfortunately disappeared. Over the next few weeks I will try hunt down good reproductions of all 100 pieces, and I might have to break out the book to find some appropriate quotations. Some of the images below link to larger versions of the artworks; I hope that one day all will.

Three quarters a millennium has not diminished the power of Dante's epic, and one of the best translations is still that by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine, in three volumes - Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.

HellPurgatoryParadise

1 – The Delightful mount

1 – The Reign of The Penitents

1 – Dante

2 – Reassurance
  

3 – Charon and the Crossing of the Acheron
 
3 – Piccarda Donati
 
4 – The Powers of Soul

4 – Beatrice Resolves Danté's Doubts

5 – Minos

5 – Virgil's Admonishment
 

6 – Cerberus
  

7 – The Avaricious and the Prodigal

7 – The Law of Climbing

7 – Dante In Doubt
  
8 – The ascent to Venus
 
9 – The Eagle of Grace
 

10 – Faritana

10 – Our Lady of the Annunciation

10 – The Song Of The Wise Spirits
 
11 – The Proud One
 
11 – The Dust of Souls

12 – The Minotaur

12 – Ecstatic Visions

12 – The Apparition of Dante's Great-Great Grandfather
13 – Gianni Schicchi's Bite
13 – The Second Cornice
 
 
14 – The Blind For Envy

14 – The Cross of Mars
 
15 – The Angel of Mercy

15 – Cacciaguida's History Lesson
 
16 – In The Hands Of Antaeus
 
16 – The two Circles of Spirits
  
17 – Cacciaguida Sees Danté's Exile in God

18 – The Flatterer
 
18 – Beatrice Comforts The Poet
 
19 – The Siren of The Dream

19 – In The Heaven of Jupiter

20 – The Black Cherub
  
  
21 – The Celestial Staircase
 
22 – Prodigality
 
 
23 – Greed

23 – The Garden of Christ
 
24 – The Tree Of Punishment
 
 
25 – The Lustful

25 – The Apparition of St James

26 – The Simoniacs

26 – The Two Crowds of the Lustful
 

27 – Lucifer

27 – Virgil's Last Words
 
  
28 – St Peter and Dante
 
29 – Dante and Beatrice
 
 
30 – Dante's Repentance
 

31 – The Prophecy of Vanni Fucci
  
   
  
33 – St. Bernard's Prayer To The Virgin

 

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