Purgatory: Dante's Dream (Canto 19)

Salvador Dalí

c. 1960

Woodcut

Dallas Museum of Art

During 1951–1963 Salvador Dalí completed a series of illustrations for the "Divine Comedy" by the Florentine Medieval poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). This poem, written in the first person, charts Dante’s imaginative journey through the three realms of afterlife, from the darkness of error in Hell to the divine light of revelation in Paradise. Dalí produced a series of 100 wood engravings printed in colors, one for each "canto" (section) of the "Divine Comedy": 34 for Hell, 33 for Purgatory and 33 for Paradise. storage