Salvador Dalí’s Illustrations of Dante’s The Divine Comedy

In 1957, the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment com­mis­sioned Sal­vador Dalí to paint a series of 100 water­col­or illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy, the great­est lit­er­ary work writ­ten in the Ital­ian lan­guage. The illus­tra­tions were to be fin­ished by 1965, the 700th anniver­sary of the poet­’s birth, and then repro­duced and released in lim­it­ed print edi­tions. The deal fell apart, how­ev­er, when the Ital­ian pub­lic learned that their lit­er­ary pat­ri­mo­ny had been put in the hands of a Spaniard. Unde­terred, Dalí pushed for­ward on his own, paint­ing illus­tra­tions for the epic poem that col­lec­tive­ly recount Dante’s sym­bol­ic trav­els through Hell, Pur­ga­to­ry and Heav­en. After Dalí did his part, the project was hand­ed over to two wood engravers, who spent five years hand-carv­ing 3,500 blocks used to cre­ate the repro­duc­tions of Dalí’s mas­ter­piece. Almost 50 years lat­er, print edi­tions can still be pur­chased online. And the paint­ings them­selves still trav­el the globe, mak­ing their way to muse­ums large and small. You can view images from the col­lec­tion at this Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Sal­vador Dalí’s Haunt­ing 1975 Illus­tra­tions for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juli­et

The Most Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Sal­vador Dalí’s Paint­ings Pub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful New Book by Taschen: Includes Nev­er-Seen-Before Works

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Illus­trat­ed by Sal­vador Dalí in 1969, Final­ly Gets Reis­sued