Salvador Dali - The Divine Comedy, Purgatory: Canto 15 (Envy)

Artist: Salvador Dali

Medium: Original wood engraving on Rives Paper

Year: 1960

Edition: Part of a limited edition set (Purgatorio canto 15, The Divine Comedy)

Sheet size: 26x33cm

Signature: Plate-signed 

Certificate of Authenticity (COA): Yes

Conditions: Excellent conditions

Publisher: Editions d'art Les Heures Claires, 19 Rue Bonaparte, Paris

Reference: The Official Catalog of The Works of Salvador Dali by Albert Field page 200 # 15

Frame: Yes

About the work:

Dante Alighieri wrote his Commedia over a period o f years and completed it in the year o f his death. (The appellation “Divine” was added in the 15th century.) It is written in terza rima, a series of triplets of 10 or 11 syllables per line, the middle line rhyming with the first and third lines of the following triplet.
The poem consists o f 100 cantos describing a trip through the Afterlife, Vergil guiding Dante through Hell and Purgatory, and Beatrice through Paradise. Dante had been very active politically, and he peopled Hell and Purgatory not merely with sinners by types, but with named persons! To celebrate the 700th anniversary of his birth, the government of Italy planned to issue a special edition o f Divine Comedy. For this, from 1951 through 1960 Dali created 101 watercolors.
There was immediate opposition. Communists protested the “waste” of money that was needed for “better” purposes. And patriots objected to the work of Italy’s greatest poet being illustrated by a Spaniard.
In the end the government issued commemorative postage stamps!