William Blake's Divine Comedy Illustrations: 102 Full-Color Plates (Dover Fine Art, History of Art)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
William Blake's Divine Comedy Illustrations: 102 Full-Color Plates (Dover Fine Art, History of Art) Details
About the Author Painter, printer, and poet, William Blake (1757-1827) was a master at expressing great literature through his art. Perhaps the finest engraver in English history, Blake's illuminated books — filled with sketches and watercolors that boggle the mind with their beauty and detail — are as sought after today as they were over a hundred years ago. Read more
Reviews
This book of 102 plates is a grand collection and shows the work of Blake in various stages of completion from rough sketches, to watercolor wash, to etching, to full multi-colored complete watercolors, and to full multi-colored, multi-plate prints. Thus you see impressions and ideas in early stages of execution all the way to fully realized expressive works. For the most part, the works are magnificent. Blake was a fine draftsman and the graphic illustrative qualities of his work are strong. He has somewhat of an academic style in regard to drawing or painting the human body with the male, often nude, drawn with flowing manneristic precision and revealing a hyper-muscular approach to the male body. In other words, his male figures are often nude muscular fellows with flowing expressive movement. Some of the less developed works are exquisite in their early stages, such as the illustration of Virgil, at the request of Beatrice, assisting Dante in his quest for divine wisdom, an image of two figures cradled, protected, by huge flowing trees. Blake loves monsters and he really gets the opportunity to let his imagination go with the many demons and monsters and mythological characters that Virgil and Dante encounter. Whereas Blake can create fragile, pastel, impressions he can also create dark contrasting areas of great dynamism. An image of the lustful dead being swept across the dark indigo night sky is a fantastic image. Any artist would be content to have 10 masterpieces in their artistic career. Blake had hundreds of successful master works. The unfinished works feel very contemporary, such as a watercolor in mauve and yellow ochre where Dante asks Virgil to explain the influence of Fortune on humans. Blake creates an alternate reality for his world of hell, purgatory, and heaven are truly other realities than the lived in reality of life on earth. Blake's drawn diagram of the nine circles of hell puts most contemporary drawings to shame with its subtlety and sketchy graphic qualities. In another watercolor, Dante and Virgil approach the Minotaur and the surface colors are exquisite and the Minotaur has all the power of a Picasso monster. Dante mixes the gods of antiquity into hell. His completed watercolor and ink drawing of Capaneus, unrepentant and defiant, who was struck down by the lightning bolts of Zeus, shows the power of the finished pieces. The finished work of Neptune's son Anteus is absolutely beautiful. Overall the collection is a grand achievement and the images are outstanding. Dante was very concerned about the politics of the Papacy and Tuscany but Blake's images rises above the local to the universal.
