Reading Blake’s Dante

“Reading Blake’s Dante” examines Dante’s presence in William Blake’s art and life, focusing on the 102 watercolor illustrations to the Divine Comedy and seven engravings to the Inferno that Blake executed between 1825 and 1827. It will examine the illustrations, discuss what illustrating Dante meant to Blake, and it will demonstrate the role that the William Blake Archive can play in our attempts to understand the subject of “Blake and Dante.”