Description
When he was forty-five, Blake began to study Italian for the express purpose of reading Dante. More than twenty years later, when John Linnell commissioned a series of illustrations of the Divine Comedy, Blake worked from the original text, using H. F. Cary's 1814 English translation as a guide. The painter and printmaker Samuel Palmer recalled finding Blake hard at work on the designs despite being bedridden with a scalded foot:
On a bed covered with books he sat up like one of the Antique patriarchs, or a dying Michael Angelo. Thus and there he was making in the leaves of a great book (folio) the sublimest design from his (not superior) Dante.
Blake's illustrations reveal both disagreement with the poem's underlying Catholic doctrine and a deep affinity for Dante's distinctive cadences. Just as the Italian verse becomes progressively evocative, so Blake's illustrations appear increasingly free. He prepared 102 watercolors for the project, 7 of which were engraved before his death; 11 are exhibited here. The vertical symmetries and clear contours recall his earlier work, but the handling here is more fluent and the luminous effects—achieved through successive applications of translucent watercolors—establish Blake as one of the finest colorists of his age.
In the image above, Dante and Virgil encounter the unrepentant Capaneus, one of seven legendary kings who besieged the ancient Greek city of Thebes. He was killed by a thunderbolt for defying the god Jove.
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Description