Above is Gustave Doré's representation of one of the giants in hell, placing Dante and his guide Virgil on to the ground. Doré's drawings end up on a lot of the covers for the
Divine Comedy, since, I presume, they are in the public domain, and completely wonderful. Dover publishes all of the illustrations for the
Divine Comedy, in
one 9 x 12 inch volume. Below Doré etches the Hypocrites.
Dover, as it usually is, is simple about the book. They put on of the illustrations on the cover (pictured below) with simple text. There are 136 plates, picturing
Inferno,
Purgatorio, and
Paradiso and Dante himself. Illustrations are both horizontal and vertical on the page. Below each one is a title, reference to the passage in the
Comedy, and a quotation of a few lines from the Longfellow translation. The book lies flat comfortably and the printing is sharp.
Inferno, when read poorly, seems like an endless list of people who have done things wrong. Because of this, a visual attachment is immensely helpful, and Doré provides a really fantastic set of them. There are 75 drawings for the
Inferno, the next 43 are for
Purgatorio, and there are only 18 for
Paradiso. This is, of course, beacuse the text moves from people endlessly tortured—one Ugolino must gnaw on the face of his enemy for eternity—to ever-increasing quantities of light, which make for less-excited drawings no doubt.
Above is Gustave Doré's representation of one of the giants in hell, placing Dante and his guide Virgil on to the ground. Doré's drawings end up on a lot of the covers for the Divine Comedy, since, I presume, they are in the public domain, and completely wonderful. Dover publishes all of the illustrations for the Divine Comedy, in one 9 x 12 inch volume. Below Doré etches the Hypocrites.
Dover, as it usually is, is simple about the book. They put on of the illustrations on the cover (pictured below) with simple text. There are 136 plates, picturing Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and Dante himself. Illustrations are both horizontal and vertical on the page. Below each one is a title, reference to the passage in the Comedy, and a quotation of a few lines from the Longfellow translation. The book lies flat comfortably and the printing is sharp.
Inferno, when read poorly, seems like an endless list of people who have done things wrong. Because of this, a visual attachment is immensely helpful, and Doré provides a really fantastic set of them. There are 75 drawings for the Inferno, the next 43 are for Purgatorio, and there are only 18 for Paradiso. This is, of course, beacuse the text moves from people endlessly tortured—one Ugolino must gnaw on the face of his enemy for eternity—to ever-increasing quantities of light, which make for less-excited drawings no doubt.
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