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Lot Essay
In 1951, Salvador Dalí was commissioned by the Italian Governement to produce an illustrated edition of Dante's Divina Commedia to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth. The work was never actually realised in its initially conceived form, which would have required the engraving of over 3500 woodblocks. The book was eventually published in 1960 by a Franco-Italian editor, Les Heures Claires, and the present work, L'ange déchu, was interestingly chosen to illustrate the first Canto of the Purgatorio. This choice is clearly at odds with Dante's text, which places Lucifer, 'The Fallen Angel', as the guardian of the Inferno at the very bottom of Hell.
This watercolour is the finished maquette for the very successful printed plate, and is critically acclaimed as one of the most poetically intense of Dalí's representations of the Commedia. It gives an exceptional insight into Dalí's original and fecund relationship with classical and literary tradition, and his constant need for an avant-garde re-interpretation of myths, iconographies and visual clichés.
In the original text, Dante and Virgil arrive at the bottom of Hell after an emotionally devastating trip through punishment and pain without redemption. Yet, Dante's confrontation with punished sin is always ambivalent - sin is complex, at moments fascinating, never moralistically described. One would expect this feeling to reach its climax when Dante finally meets the very Source of evil - Lucifer, the master of Hell. Instead, in the last Canto of the Inferno Lucifer is a grotesque three-headed beast, pathetic, uninteresting, representing the 'banality of evil'.
Dalí cannot, clearly, accept such a vision of sin and evil, which are a source of fundamental fascination to him, and, associated with desire and lust, constitute the concepts that comprise the very basis of Surrealism. Therefore, Dalí subverts Dante's text, and creates his own Lucifer, much more in keeping with the Bible's original story. Of Dante's representation of Lucifer, he keeps only the claws, and the bruises on the Fallen Angel's body - a consequence of his terrible fall from the skies. In Dalí's vision, Lucifer is still the most beautiful of Angels, young, rebellious, with luscious, multi-coloured wings, enigmatically absorbed in self-contemplation. In a striking homage to his own imagery, Dalí fuses Lucifer with the image of the Venus de Milo, by affixing to Lucifer's martyred body his trademark open drawers - a genial signature, Dalí's own way of ridiculing classical tradition. Yet, some of Dante's sad contemplation of the hollowness of Evil is heavily present in this watercolour, as Lucifer stares into his empty drawers, suspended in a world of detached, poetic melancholy.
This watercolour is the finished maquette for the very successful printed plate, and is critically acclaimed as one of the most poetically intense of Dalí's representations of the Commedia. It gives an exceptional insight into Dalí's original and fecund relationship with classical and literary tradition, and his constant need for an avant-garde re-interpretation of myths, iconographies and visual clichés.
In the original text, Dante and Virgil arrive at the bottom of Hell after an emotionally devastating trip through punishment and pain without redemption. Yet, Dante's confrontation with punished sin is always ambivalent - sin is complex, at moments fascinating, never moralistically described. One would expect this feeling to reach its climax when Dante finally meets the very Source of evil - Lucifer, the master of Hell. Instead, in the last Canto of the Inferno Lucifer is a grotesque three-headed beast, pathetic, uninteresting, representing the 'banality of evil'.
Dalí cannot, clearly, accept such a vision of sin and evil, which are a source of fundamental fascination to him, and, associated with desire and lust, constitute the concepts that comprise the very basis of Surrealism. Therefore, Dalí subverts Dante's text, and creates his own Lucifer, much more in keeping with the Bible's original story. Of Dante's representation of Lucifer, he keeps only the claws, and the bruises on the Fallen Angel's body - a consequence of his terrible fall from the skies. In Dalí's vision, Lucifer is still the most beautiful of Angels, young, rebellious, with luscious, multi-coloured wings, enigmatically absorbed in self-contemplation. In a striking homage to his own imagery, Dalí fuses Lucifer with the image of the Venus de Milo, by affixing to Lucifer's martyred body his trademark open drawers - a genial signature, Dalí's own way of ridiculing classical tradition. Yet, some of Dante's sad contemplation of the hollowness of Evil is heavily present in this watercolour, as Lucifer stares into his empty drawers, suspended in a world of detached, poetic melancholy.