About the work

A rare copper plate engraving by Salvador Dalí illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy.

In November 1949, Pope Pius XII granted Salvador Dalí a private audience and, even more astonishingly, consented to Dalí’s request to paint the Immaculate Conception. (That painting, “The Madonna of Port Lligat”, became one of Dalí’s most important works.) The Pope’s honoring of Dalí astonished many, in part because Dalí had proclaimed himself “a Surrealist void of all moral values” during his 1929 stay in Paris with André Breton’s surrealists.

The Italian government, jealous that the Pontiff met with Dalí, announced shortly thereafter that the National Library of Italy had commissioned Dalí to illustrate Dante’s greatest masterpiece, “The Divine Comedy”, as part of the upcoming celebration of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s birth. But this led to yet more outcry, this time by people who were offended that a non-serious artist like Dalí would illustrate a book central to Italian national pride. It was not long before the Italian Parliament terminated the contract.

But Dalí was enthralled by Dante’s poem and was already deeply immersed in the project. Therefore, he offered the project to French publisher Joseph Forêt. Forêt’s company, Editions d’art Les Heures Claires, published limited-edition books illustrated with fine art. Forêt presented an exhibition of Dalí’s 100 Divine Comedy watercolors in 1960. These works are considered by many to be Dalí’s most creative body of work.

Dante Allegheri wrote The Divine Comedy just before his death in 1321. The story begins on Good Friday in the year 1930, when Dante Allegheri—then at the midpoint of his life—went for a walk. While walking through the dark wood, Dante becomes lost (both literally and metaphorically). While lost, Dante is attacked by three beasts: a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf (each a reflection of a type of sin). He was saved and protected by the souls of the Virgin Mary, St. Lucia, and Dante’s great love, Beatrice. (Dante met Beatrice when he was nine and she was eight at a party at her father’s home, marking the start of a lifelong unrequited love for Beatrice. Dante was 35 years of age at the start of the Divine Comedy, which means that Beatrice would have been some 11 years dead. Ultimately, it is Beatrice who brings Dante into Paradise.) Beatrice, St. Lucia, and the Virgin Mary are pure and not allowed to enter hell, so Beatrice sends Virgil—a pagan who never had the opportunity to become a Christian and therefore remains in limbo—who explains that the only route out of the dark woods in which Dante finds himself is through Hell. Virgil offers to guide Dante.

In his walk through Hell, Dante witnesses people suffering terrible torments for all eternity in places of terror, violence, and monstrous creatures.

This illustration is Dante’s first glimpse of Fourth Circle of Hell—the circle for the Wasters and the Hoarders. Their punishment is that they are rolling enormous weights at one another, the Wasters shouting to the Hoarders, “Why do you hoard?” and the Hoarders shouting to the spendthrifts, “Why do you waste?” After they clash, the souls hurry their weights back again, only to repeat the action, all the while screaming, for ever and ever and ever.

Les Heures Claires published the Divine Comedy in an edition of 4765 copies printed from woodblock engraved by Raymond Jacquet. Only 165 of those sets included an extra set of the prints executed in copper engravings. This print is from that special edition of 165.

This picture is custom framed using strictly conservation-grade materials in a solid Maple frame behind 99% UV-blocking art glass.