Illustrated book
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Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIII/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXIII/3 In this circle the hypocrites are found wearing leaden cloaks gilded over. This seemed particularly pertinent to Dante by virtue of the etymology of the word that appears in the 12th Century dictionary of Uguccione de Bagni: i. e. YPER meaning 'above' and CRISIS meaning 'gold'. It is a good example of bad information making good art since the etymology is quite erroneous. In the original printing gold screen-ink covered a base of lead-black (graphite) to echo the metaphor in physical terms. The false etymology is featured in a design made from the same piece of coarse monkish hessian quoted for the Franciscan imagery of Canto XVI/3. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIII/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXIII/4 This image ends the second volume of the original edition. The Crucifixion is parodied in the pinning of Caiaphas to the floor of the circle of hypocrites: i. e. he is so low in the scale of that sin that he is only fit to be walked over by the others. To increase the irony the figure is made of collage fragments of natural elements (rock etc.) to indicate that he has become part of the very structure of Hell. The floor is made of the same pleats as form the rivers of tears in Canto XIV/4. The rest, including the hints of cowled figures in the background, comes from fragments of Dore's illustrations -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXIV/2 These four images of transience as exemplified by the elements reflect Dante's opening pastoral simile and Virgil's recapitulations of its meaning in both his change of mood and his exhortation to Dante to beware of slothfulness which produces the ephemeral life. Air, Fire, Snow and Water are illustrated from Boy's Own Paper fragments (Virgil's is a very BOP message here). Earth is only hinted at in the gritty mezzotint border. At the centre (from La Mode Illustree) are reminiscences of 'blankets and soft dawn'. In Dante's day (as throughout Europe until as late as the nineteenth century) Fame was an honourable goal that could be acknowledged without equivocation. The shapes of the compartments of the picture resemble those of playing cards as if to continue the imagery of chance. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXIV/3 Dante alludes to the Phoenix in the mood of ancient knowledge and I have thus tried to make a page of some imagined manuscript in which such arcana might have been found. The phoenix has a special relevance to pages of this book in particular since the whole production was revived from its own ashes after the first year's work on the original had been destroyed in a fire at Editions Alecto in 1979. The range of Dante's sources, ancient and modern, oriental and occidental is present in the stylistic and calligraphic mixture of this page with its hieroglyphs, pseudo-oriental script, its Greek illuminated capital, its sequence of Phoenix pictures reminiscent of alchemical treatises, and its modern typographic fragment. The lidded box implies the union of ancient and Hermetic imagery with Christian thought, a feat of unification on Dante's part that outstrips Aquinas. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXIV/4 As in Canto XVI/1 the original Golden Section Lily has been subject to computerised distortion. These are more extreme variants from the graphics computer at Leicester Polytechnic. They serve to represent, according to the misty prophecies of Vanni Fucci (nicknamed 'the Beast' and himself an extremist of the Black Guelph faction) the fates of the Black and White Guelph parties. The Whites suffer the greater distortion in the fall of their fortunes while the more recognisable Black lily seems to float higher. The original drawing was, so to speak, wrapped around itself in an imaginary space by the computer which made more possible the airborne aspect of the emblems as they participate in Vanni Fucci's strange shrouded meteorological predictions, so darkly turbulent. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIX/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIX/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIX/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXIX/3 The reappearance here of the walls of A Folly for Wisdom (cf. IV/1) now broken and reassembled in a topsy-turvy fashion heralds the representatives of Sienese folly often caricatured by Florentines as Dante does here by mentioning some typical spendthrift fools such as Niccolo who was said to have used costly and exotic cloves as the fuel with which he cooked pheasants. The castle walls in their state of disarray and the upside down text on the arms of Siena (copied from a black and white print I saw in a Venice shop window) indicate the reversal of values that Dante castigates. The broken structure now contains, instead of poets and sages, samples of stupidity and decadence half drawn from the imagination and half from memories of school and university contemporaries. The green triangle (cf. Canto IV/1 and XVI/4) is also requoted in irony. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIX/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXV/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXV/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXV/3 It is Ovid, the master of metamorphosis, whom Dante challenges to a stylistic dual, inviting the reader to witness his superior skill. Echoing once again the format of early book illustrations in keeping with the wealth of literary reference in the Canto, four quasi-Ovidian scenes surround a portrait of the poet (itself derived from various vague Roman likenesses). No precise events in Ovid's Metamorphoses are alluded to, though the original lithograph was itself achieved (using a series of transparencies of an original grisaille) by a process of metamorphosis. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXV/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXV/4 The fragments of Laocoon that were used as the frontispiece of this Canto in an emblematic and formal way are here reassembled (as the reptilian elements in the text reassemble and change) to make a more organic figuration. The classical elements are rearranged to form a mannerist/romantic group, a transcription of the original energies of the sculpture. The colouring is intended to recall the muscular feats of Michelangelo's supermen and the sexual implications of the formal elements are given free reign as if to combine the themes of the preceding illustrations. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXVI/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Canto XXVI/1 GODI FIORENZA, the opening cry of this canto is here writ large (very large in fact since the original drawing for the lettering is fifty inches high) and in sombre colours, to stress its irony. The only gleam of relief lies in the slight displacement of positive and negative plates which, so to speak, by deliberate error serves to outline the words which would otherwise be almost indistinguishable. A Florence which Dante castigates for its loss of honour and brightness is here characterised by a lily in bloodless grey. The coarseness of texture implies a slogan in the manner of wall graffiti (`Up Arsenal' etc.) -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXVI/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXVI/2 Among the flames which, in an extended image, he compares to fireflies, Dante spies out five Florentines in the perpetual dusk. Here in what heraldry would call a `field' of stylised fireflies I have placed five reduced versions of the computer-distorted lilies already used in Canto XXIV/4. These have been highlighted both by the suppression of the background mezzotint and their being encircled, as if in the telescopic sights of a gun, by target-shapes (combinations in fact of Letraset photo-registration marks) which pinpoint them as unerringly as does Dante's scorn. The number 5 is the page number of the Human Document text. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXVI/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXVII/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXVII/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXVII/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983
XXVII/3 In returning to Dante's running verbal vendetta against Pope Boniface VIII the initial illustration to Canto XIX is revisited. It tumbles now to emphasise the single key which indicates that this Pope at least can only make the dispensation of a long season in Hell, though he is seen here affording the impotent absolution that he gives to Guido. In the background the sign of blessing is seen parodied in a form reminiscent of the blasphemous gestures of Canto XXV/2. The image of Boniface comes from a drawing that I made in 1979 in the foyer of the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, where a poster featured his equestrian statue. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.