William Blake // The Drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy

Celebrated around the world as a literary monument, The Divine Comedy is widely considered the greatest work ever composed in the Italian language. Written by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and completed the year of his death, the epic poem describes Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, representing the soul’s path towards salvation.

In the last few years of his life, Romantic poet and artist William Blake (1757–1827) produced 102 illustrations for Dante’s masterwork, from pencil sketches to finished watercolors. Like Dante's sweeping poem, Blake's drawings range from scenes of infernal suffering to celestial light, from horrifying human disfigurement to the perfection of physical form. While faithful to the text, Blake also brought his own perspective to some of Dante's central themes. Left in various stages of completion at the time of his death, today Blake’s illustrations are dispersed among seven different institutions.

This TASCHEN edition brings these works together again, alongside key excerpts from Dante's masterpiece. Two introductory essays consider Dante and Blake, as well as other major artists who have been inspired by The Divine Comedy— including Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Doré and Auguste Rodin. With a close reading of Blake’s illustrations, and 14 fold-out spreads to allow the most delicate of details to dazzle, this is a breathtaking encounter with two of the finest artistic talents in history, exploring universal themes of love, guilt, punishment, revenge, and redemption.