“In Visions of Heaven, renowned scholar Martin Kemp investigates Dante’s supreme vision of divine light and its implications for the visual artists who were the inheritors of Dante’s vision. The whole book may be regarded as a new Paragone (comparison), the debate that began in the Renaissance about which of the arts is superior. Dante’s ravishing accounts of divine light set painters the severest challenge, which took them centuries to meet. A major theme running through Dante’s Divine Comedy, particularly in its third book, the Paradiso, centres on Dante s acts of seeing (conducted according to optical rules with respect to the kind of visual experience that can be accomplished on earth) and the overwhelming of Dante s earthly senses by heavenly light, which does not obey his rules of earthly optics. [. . .] Published to coincide with the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, this hugely original book combines a close reading of Dante’s poetry with analysis of early optics and the art of the Renaissance and Baroque to create a fascinating, wide-ranging and visually exciting study.” — Amazon (retrieved October 18, 2021)
D. M. Black’s Translation of Purgatorio (2021)
“A new translation of Dante’s Purgatorio that celebrates the human elements of the second part of The Divine Comedy. This is a bilingual edition with an illuminating introduction from the translator.
“Black, a distinguished psychoanalyst as well as a poet, provides an introduction and commentary to this masterpiece by Dante from a contemporary point of view in this bilingual edition.” [. . .] —Amazon (retrieved on October 20, 2021)
Illuminating Dante Exhibit at the University of Arkansas
“Presented from October 5-31, the exhibit consists of 22 items from Special Collections, including a recently acquired 1520 exemplar of the Divine Comedy with commentary by Cristoforo Landino, one full-page woodcut illustration, and 98 smaller woodcuts introducing each canto. Also on view are various editions of Dante’s masterpiece in Italian and English, with illustrations by Gustave Doré and John Flaxman, and works connected to or inspired by the Divine Comedy, including a collection of poems by Vittoria Colonna (1548) and a treatise by Lucrezia Marinella (1601).
“The exhibit includes medieval, early modern, and modern illustrations of the Divine Comedy, ranging from 13th-century illuminations to Sandro Botticelli’s and William Blake’s illustrations. Finally, the exhibit displays works that explore the reception of Dante’s masterpiece across cultural contexts, with works from countries including Spain and France. Examples from the African American community are represented, as well.” [. . .] — University of Arkansas News, October 5, 2021
See more information about the exhibit here.
Visions of Dante Exhibit Highlighting Cornell University’s Fiske Dante Collection
“Marking the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, the exhibition of approximately 100 works in various media explores the visual nature of the Divine Comedy, which has inspired scholars and artists alike, from medieval times through today.
“Visions of Dante not only puts on display a large portion of the Fiske Collection for the first time. It also brings together works lent by notable institutions like the Morgan Library & Museum and 20th century and contemporary artists from William Blake to Salvador Dalí, Robert Rauschenberg, and Kara Walker.
“‘This exhibition reasserts the continued vibrancy of the Divine Comedy as a work of art, a work of literature, and shows the many ways in which visual artists have made their own personal interpretations and translations of that original text,’ says co-curator Andrew C. Weislogel, the Johnson’s Seymour R. Askin, Jr. ’47 Curator of Earlier European and American Art.” [. . .] –Susan Kelley, Cornell Chronicle, September 29, 2021
The exhibit is held at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and runs from September 14 – December 19, 2021.
See more information and view an online version of the exhibit here.
Requiem of the Crazies Comics (2018)
“A young troubled man who finds himself living on the streets with a gun in his mouth and nowhere to go is given hope for a new life when he is taken in by a streetwise bum named Vern. Dante is introduced to the underground world of the homeless, the Crazies, where a bum can stay for the month of May and won’t need any money. A sanctuary for all those who have been forsaken. . . If only it were that easy. When corrupt politicians, drug dealers and an insane cult leader begin fighting for power, the meek homeless become nothing more than pawns in a malicious game of power. “I thought being homeless would be really easy,” Dante thinks, as him and Vern set off on their journey to fight the evil forces bent on corrupting the minds of the homeless. ” [. . .] –Rusty Cage, Indiegogo (retrieved October 18, 2021)
The series was started by Rusty Cage in 2018 and is currently on the third of eight planned installments.
