Illustrations to Dante's "Divine Comedy"

Blake's 102 drawings illustrating Dante's Divine Comedy were commissioned by John Linnell, the chief patron of Blake's final years. Although Linnell did not begin to pay for the designs until December 1825, at the rate of about 1 pound a week, Blake probably began work on the drawings by the fall of 1824. They were left at Blake's death in 1827 in various stages of completion, ranging from pencil sketches to highly finished water colors. Most show an expressive freedom in the handling of color washes far greater than Blake's earlier water colors. In 1826, Blake began to engrave large plates based on 7 of the designs; these were also left incomplete at his death. The water colors remained in Linnell's collection and estate until their sale at auction in 1918. Through a scheme organized by the National Art-Collections Fund, they were dispersed among 7 participating institutions: the Ashmolean Museum, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, the British Museum, the Fogg Art Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Royal Institution of Cornwall, and the Tate Collection.

As we generally find with Blake's illustrations to the works of other writers, he has paid close attention to the details of Dante's poem. Yet, while faithful to the text, Blake also brings his own perspective to bear on some of Dante's central themes, including sin, guilt, punishment, revenge, and salvation. In several designs, Blake's pictorial imagery, particularly when associated with similar motifs in his illuminated books and their iconography, indicates a critical attitude towards Dante. This interpretation of the illustrations is buttressed by Blake's verbal criticisms of Dante found in his c. 1800 annotations to Henry Boyd's translation of The Inferno, his conversations with Henry Crabb Robinson in 1825, and his inscriptions on the rectos of a few of the Dante designs themselves. But harsh criticism coexists with many signs of intellectual sympathy in the illustrations.

We have recorded in the Editors' Notes the inscriptions on the versos of the designs. None of these is attributable to Blake; some probably represent at least 2 attempts to organize the designs into their proper sequence. The arrangement of images given here accords with our understanding of the sequence of passages illustrated and varies at several junctures from Butlin's ordering.