With the watercolors created between 1951 and 1954, Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) takes his place in a rich tradition of attempts to make Dante's verbal images available through drawing and painting. Early codices, e.g., the Codex Altonensis [CA] (such initials in brackets refer to the bibliography, below) are illuminated and include vignettes; Sandro Botticelli, William Blake and Gustave Doré are among those who have created well-known series [KB].

Hence, an Italian government's commission to create another set of illustrations for the 1965 centenary was a signal honor for Dalí. It made him stand out among the 52 contemporary illustrators compiled by E. T. Haskell [JB, Appendix B: 'Twentieth-Century Book Illustrators of Dante']. He produced watercolors 16.5" in height and 11" to 12" in width with very narrow margins, intended for an Italian Dante edition of that size.

In Spring 1954 a retrospective in the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome, displayed the watercolors after they were refused by the Italian government 'because of political opposition' [GI, p.527]. The earliest reproductions were seven lithographs by the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato in Rome. They were made into a specimen brochure with the text of seven corresponding canti -- probably before the refusal. An introduction by Luigi Pietrobono is dated 16 September 1952; the brochure appeared in 1954. The copy of Reynolds Morse, now in the Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida, contains my contextual numbers 36 with the text of Inferno 27; 27 with the text of Purgatorio 23; and 94 with the text of Paradiso 9. This shows that the illustrations were already out of context at this time.

A canonical ordering

The 1960 Paris exposition of the watercolors was accompanied by a catalogue [CP]. In it, Joseph Foret announced Jean Estrade's plan to reproduce the watercolors at a scale of .6 by superposition of numerous monochromatic offset prints -- an average of 36 woodblocks per illustration, covered by celluloid -- and to include them in a printed edition of the French text of the Divine Comedy, 'after a foreign government refused to do so.'

The catalogue used a sequential numbering from 1 through 100, as indicated in handwriting on the back of the watercolors, which it identified with the hundred canti in Dante's opus. For each illustration a caption (some of these were also indicated in handwriting on the back of the watercolors) and a context were given. The book edition [EJ] is based on the same numbering with one difference: number 66 of [CP] was removed and another one neither mentioned nor shown in [CP] added as 67. Hence, a total of 101 watercolors is known.

Today the watercolors are widely scattered, as many were sold by Foret with luxury copies of the book edition. For example, A. Reynolds Morse received the contextual numbers 90 and 91, now in Florida; number 35 found its way into several European expositions from Swiss private holdings.

The lost context

Already in the Italian brochure of 1954 the Dantean context of Dalí's illustrations had been lost. The most striking example is the association of Lucifer's torso chewing a man with canto 27 of the Inferno. The caption 'A devil as logician' does in fact derive from canto 27; its illustration, however, is moved into Purgatorio 23 (and to Purgatorio 1 by [CP]). A figure with a beak is associated with Paradiso 9 because the name Folco in this canto seems to evoke a falcon! In a similar way two-thirds of the watercolors were dubiously placed and misinterpreted in [CP]. Later editions and catalogues used the same misnumbering, even the recent [FC], in which only Lucifer and a few others regained their correct places.

Art critics, even in the field of Dante studies, have been badly misled by the canonical ordering. Barricelli's complaints about the sexual details found in Dalí [JB, p.88] mostly ignore the contexts in which Dante himself strikes this chord quite frankly. The sexually explicit nature of number 70 (the prostituted Church in Purgatorio 32) escaped him completely. Remarkable is a caption criticized by Barricelli but not mentioned in [CP]: 'Divine Impenetrability' [JB, p.84]. Barricelli indeed considers the watercolor rather penetrable. To associate it with the two last terzine of the Commedia did not occur to him. Even the most recent treatment [NE] appears to be based on Field's ordering used in Gizzi's 'Dalí e Dante,' cited at its conclusion.

The aim of my paper is to clarify these misapprehensions.

Was Dalí careless?

Some remarks in his autobiography seem to want to make us believe that, at the time of the book edition by Estrade, Salvador Dalí himself no longer remembered the precise context of his various illustrations. Madame Gala Dalí is held responsible for their arrangement in the edition. In an anecdote Dalí also declares himself not willing to become an expert on Dante [PA, p. 318].

Indeed, the care with which Dalí followed Dante's text is striking and contradicts his remark that he had never read the Comedy [PA, p.318]. Gibson has pinpointed many such contradictions, e.g., '[Dalí] had been reading Dante's great work with passionate interest (he said) and had discovered that it reflected his own spiritual evolution' [GI, p.512]. Numerous situations, gestures, and colors are painted so precisely that they permit us to match almost every single illustration with a specific Dantean context. Most of the correspondences can be described by simply quoting the verses corresponding to each picture.

With 101 watercolors known, apparently there is not exactly one illustration for each of Dante's hundred canti as [CP] suggested. There are canti that Dalí simply omitted (Inf. 4, 8, 11, 15, 21, 22, 23, 29; Purg. 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 28; Par. 4, 5, 7-13, 15, 16, 19, 20). On the other hand, Dalí chose more than one text for illustration from other canti (Inf. 1, 5, 7, 9, 12, 16, 28, 31, 32; Purg. 8, 9, 12, 19, 24, 27, 30, 31, 33; Par. 18, 21, 23, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33).

Some of my proposed context citations require further argument in order to make my reasons for them clear. Such reasoning is presented in the longer German version of this paper, accepted for publication in DDJb. The following abbreviated table gives for all 101 illustrations -- ordered by cantica, canto, and line of the corresponding text -- a sequential number (headed Cont#: contextual number), the context citation, a caption, the canonical number from [CP], and Field's number from [FC]; with the Canon#, either the indication of another cantica or a (!) indicates a misplacement. Illustrations for this table, ordered by Field#, can be found in the web site 'Galleria Narthex' associated with [FA] to whom I have already communicated some of my findings. The catalogue of Gizzi cited by Paul Nassar uses the same ordering and might be accessible to the reader as well. The same illustrations in my proposed contextual order can be seen in the author's web site. In 2000, Les Heures Claires (Jean Estrade) will begin to publish a French edition smaller than [EJ], including reproductions of all 100 prints under their copyright in canonical order.

My acknowledgements go (in temporal order) to A. Mazzarella [MA], J. Naffoudj, M. Roddewig, L. Palladino, A. Field [FA], C.Butler, J. Estrade [EJ], K. von Maur, and R. Hollander.

I am aware of the need for further discussion but hope to spur reconsideration of the Dantean precision of Dalí's illustrations.

Bibliography

[CA] Dante Alighieri: Divina Commedia. Codex Altonensis (ca. 1348) at Gymnasium Christianeum, Hamburg.

[CP] Catalogue: 100 Aquarelles pour la Divine Comédie de Dante Alighieri par Salvador Dalí. Paris, Joseph Foret, Editeur d'Art, 1960 (in the Bibliothèque Nationale FM, Paris).

[EJ] Dante Alighieri: La Divine Comédie (traduite en français par Julien Brizeux), illustrée par Salvador Dalí. Paris, Editions d'Art Les Heures Claires (Jean Estrade), 1963.

[FA] Albert Field, The Dalí Archives, Astoria/NY.

[FC] Albert Field: The Official Catalogue of the Graphic Works of Salvador Dalí. New York, The Dalí Archives, 1996, ISBN 0-9653611-0-1.

[GI] Ian Gibson: The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí. New York/London, W.W.Morton & Co. 1998.

[JB] Jean-Pierre Barricelli: Dante's Vision and the Artist -- Four Modern Illustrators of the Commedia. New York, Peter Lang, 1992; esp. chapter III: Dalí between Reality and Surreality, p. 82-93.

[KB] Lutz S. Malke (ed): Dante's Divine Comedy - six centuries of prints and illustrations (in German) Exposition in Berlin April 19 - June 18, 2000, ISBN 3-932545-46-X

[MA] Adriana Mazzarella: Alla ricerca di Beatrice -- Il viaggio di Dante e l'uomo moderno. Milano, In/Out Studio, 1991.

[NE] Eugene Paul Nassar: "Dante Illustration -- Fidelity to Text and Tone as Criterion," EBDSA, 27 Sept. 1999.

[PA] Andrè Perinaud (ed.): Comment on devient Dalí (English: Unspeakable Confessions; German: So wird man Dalí. Munich, Fritz Molden Verlag, 2. Aufl. 1986 for page numbers).

Cont#  Context       Caption                               Canon#      Field#

****** Inferno

1      1.1-3         Dante in Darkness                     68, Par 1   68

2      1.29          Stranded                              1           1

3      2.133         Dante remembers Beatrice              2           2

4      3.109-110     Charon on Acheron                     3           3

5      5.4-5         Minos                                 5           5

6      5.55-56       Seduced lovers                        4  (!)      11

7      5.65-66       Achilles and Polyxena                 56, Pur 22  55

8      6.22-23       Cerberus                              6           6

9      7.26-27       Prodigal and avaricious               7           7

10     7.111-112     Furious ones                          11 (!)      4

11     9.39-40       A fury                                9           9

12     9.55          Medusa                                33 (!)      22

13     10.32         Farinata                              10          10

14     12.12-13      Minotaur                              12          12

15     12.67-69      The centaur Nessus                    25 (!)      26

16     13.37         Forest of suicides                    13          13

17     14.26-27      Blasphemer                            14          14

18     16.10-11      Three Florentines                     15 (!)      19

19     16.21-22      The same                              8  (!)      8

20     17.118-120    Geryon descending                     17          18

21     18.125-126    Flatterer                             18          20

22     19.22-23      Simonists                             19          21

23     20.106-107    Diviners and sorcerers                20          27

24     24.94         Thieves                               24          25

25     25.35         Florentine thieves                    26 (!)      15

26     26.55-57      Ulysses                               34 (!)      16

27     27.122-123    A devil as logician                   35, Pur 1   35

28     28.24-25      Mohammed                              29 (!)      28

29     28.121-122    Bertrand de Born                      28          29

30     30.37-39      Myrrha                                37, Pur 3   38

31     31.67         Nimrod of Babylon                     22 (!)      23

32     31.142-143    Antaeus                               16 (!)      31

33     32.97-99      The traitor Bocca                     32          32

34     32.128-129    Count Ugolino                         30 (!)      30

35     33.97-99      Frozen tears                          23 (!)      33

36     34.28-29      Lucifer                               27 (!)      34

****** Purgatory

37     1.124-125     Virgil, about to cleanse Dante        31 of Inf   24

38     2.41-42       The angel's ship                      36          36

39     3.107-108     Manfred                               54 (!)      54

40     4.103-105     Negligent Belacqua                    38          37

41     5.104-105     Death by violence                     40 (!)      40

42     6.74-75       Sordello embraces Virgil              39 (!)      39

43     7.52-54       Impediment at nightfall               41          41

44     8.25-26       Guardian angels                       42          42

45     8.98-99       Temptress                             21 of Inf   17

46     9.28-30       Dream of Aurora and eagle             43          43

47     9.115-116     Angel of penitence                    45 (!)      45

48     10.34-36      Gabriel in marble                     98, Par 31  95

49     11.52-53      The prideful                          47 (!)      47

50     12.43-45      Arachne                               51 (!)      46

51     12.76-78      Angel of humility                     46          51

52     15.13-15      Angel of compassion                   64 (!)      64

53     16.4-5        Blind rage                            50          50

54     18.94-96      Vortex of the lethargic               52          52

55     19.7-9        Siren of avarice                      53          53

56     19.46-47      Angel of solicitude                   49 (!)      49

57     22.131-132    Tree of temperance                    58 (!)      58

58     24.64-66      Hunger of the gluttons                59 (!)      59

59     24.137-138    Angel of temperance                   66 (!)      65

60     26.43-45      The lustful                           60          60

61     27.16-17      Angel of chastity                     48 (!)      48

62     27.101-103    Leah                                  44 (!)      44

63     27.142        Last words of Virgil                  61          61

64     29.64-65      Procession of Church Triumphant       80, Par 13  79

65     30.31-32      Beatrice                              62 (!)      62

66     30.95-96      Pleading for Dante                    69, Par 2   69

67     31.10-12      Dante's confession                    65          66

68     31.105        The cardinal virtues                  63 (!)      63

69     31.130-132    The theological virtues                ---      ITALY7

70     32.131-132    The prostituted Church                57 (!)      57

71     33.138        Grace from Eunoe                      55 (!)      56

72     33.145        Dante purified                        67          67



****** Paradise

73     1.64-66       Light through Beatrice's eyes         72 (!)      72

74     2.147-148     Beatrice's discourse                  71 (!)      71

75     3.14-15       Piccarda                              75 (!)      75

76     6.10          Justinian                             70 (!)      70

77     14.104-105    Cross of Mars                         81          80

78     17.35-36      Cacciaguida                           95 (!)      94

79     18.34         Cross of just rulers                  79 (!)      82

80     18.106-107    Speaking eagle's head                 84 (!)      84

81     21.28-29      Ladder of contemplation               88          88

82     21.140-142    Cry of the angels                     77 (!)      77

83     22.151-153    View from the stars                   87 (!)      87

84     23.73-74      Mary's garden                         92 (!)      93

85     23.136-137    Christ triumph. above Mary enthroned  90          90

86     24.22-24      Saint Peter approaching               85 (!)      85

87     25.19-21      Saints Peter and James                94 (!)      98

88     25.138-139    Dante blinded by Saint John           74 (!)      74

89     26.50-51      Examined by Saint John                73 (!)      73

90     26.82-84      Adam                                  78 (!)      81

91     27.13-15      Indignant Saint Peter                 86 (!)      86

92     28.16-17      The Empyrean's light                  93 (!)      91

93     29.55-56      Arrogant angel                        89 (!)      89

94     29.118        Carnival preaching                    76 (!)      76

95     30.31-32      Dante leaves off praising Beatrice    96 (!)      97

96     30.61-63      Colors of the Empyrean                83 (!)      78

97     31.67-68      Beatrice's seat in the Rose           82 (!)      83

98     32.94-95      Virgin and Gabriel                    99          99

99     32.147-148    Learning to pray                      97 (!)      96

100    33.1 ff.      Saint Bernard's prayer                100         100

101    33.142-145    Rota ch'egualmente è mossa            91 (!)      92