Scope and Contents This painting depicts a portrait of Pella Erskine-Tulloch in Phillips' studio holding a handbound edition of Phillips' "Dante's Inferno." Tom Phillips describes this painting in "The Portrait Works" as follows: "The title of the picture 'The Dante Binding' refers to the book on which the sitter rests her arms. It was the last thing in the picture to be painted since it did not exist until the final three or four sittings. During the months this portrait took to paint, Pella Erskine-Tulloch and I were involved in designing the three volume binding for the Talfourd Press edition of Dante's Inferno. This sample blank volume was the final prototype. It was a triumphant moment in which the silkscreen cloth and spine-titling I had designed came together in her superbly structured binding: the mere presence of the book (replacing substitute books in earlier sittings) was enough to resolve the picture and propel it towards completion. Dante appears elsewhere in the portrait in the...