Description: The vivid events and characters of Dante's Divine Comedy -- one of the most powerful expressions of sacred imagination in all literature -- have inspired artists for over six centuries. This magnificently illustrated book assembles more than 250 illustrations of Dante's poem, created by fifteen known artists and some twenty anonymous illuminators to depict every aspect of the pilgrim's journey to the depths of Hell, the mountain of Purgatory, and the heavenly spheres of Paradise. Through twenty short essays and commentaries on each painting or drawing in this unique collection, Charles H. Taylor and Patricia Finley illuminate the artistry of generations of the Divine Comedy's illustrators and of the poem itself.

Taylor and Finley examine Dante's poem as a psychological journey from the dark wood of depression, through painful purgations achieved in inner work and dreams, to the maturity of objective love that is grounded in feminine compassion. And they explore how Dante's own life journey is the necessary setting for his poem. They support their interpretation with visual images of the poet's imagined journey as created by illustrators from the naive yet skilled medieval illuminators of the fourteenth century through artists as notable and diverse as Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni di Paolo, William Blake, Gustave Dore, and Leonard Baskin. In this book, Taylor and Finley encourage newcomers to discover the depth of Dante's insight into the essential human journey and invite those who know the Divine Comedy to rediscover the inexhaustible riches of the poem itself.

"This is a beautiful book, and the gorgeous pictures are their own reward. But it delivers more -- guidance to the readerwho is not already a Dante scholar. It is, I think, a true invitation to a journey". -- Peter S. Hawkins, Yale Divinity School

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