| LAFFOLEY ARCHIVE: The Divine Comedy - 1972-1975 | |||||||||
| CURRENT LISTING: Another unbelievably detailed and well-executed project! | |||||||||
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| Laffoley's
Comments: "So far the classical forms of illustrating the poem of Dante have been confined to the media of painting, drawing, print making, and some sculpture, such as that of Auguste Rodin. Even one of Dante's contemporaries, the painter Giotto, who began the tradition of illustrating the poem, appears to have considered it entirely a painter's task. Since Giotto's time approximately 30 artists have attempted the illustration. Some notables include Botticelli, Vasari, D.G. Rossetti, William Blake, Ingres, Delacroix, Gustave Dore and more recently Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Cornell. In preparing for my illustration, I researched what has now become almost a codified tradition in the visionary genre. From this tradition two basic approaches emerged. First, no one by choice or circumstance actually finished illustrating the entire Divine Comedy. Both Botticelli and Blake, who intended to finish, started to work on it late in life and died before they could complete the task. Flaxman and Dore, who are often represented as having finished the whole poem, left out certain Cantos from illustration especially in The Paradiso. Many other artists often concentrated their efforts on selected Cantos only. Second, the iconography of the solutions have been either anecdotes abstracted from individual Cantos as examples of narrative art, or visual descriptions of the architectural structure of the three Cantica, singly or totally. In my own work I decided to combine both approaches in a triptych consisting of three, six-foot square panels based on a mandallic-like structure. I show a cross-section of the conical pit of The Inferno (L'Inferno), an elevation of the Mount of Purgatory (Il Purgatorio), and a cross-section through the entire medieval cosmos (Il Paradiso), including the Celestial Rose. Surrounding each major image, in a circular series of panels (like a filmstrip), I tried by means of words, diagrams and anecdotal pictures to illustrate the entire contents of each one of the 100 Cantos of the poem. What I feel I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, is the completion of the two major iconographical thrusts of the ad hoc tradition. " - Paul Laffoley |
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Oil, and Acrylic on Canvas
Inferno
Purgatorio
Paradiso
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LaffoleyArchive.com ™(Thought Mark) 2007-2013-2063-2099 - Michael Coleman (MIQEL.COM) All Art, Quoted Text and Images are © Paul Laffoley Please don't republish these images or essays in print form for commercial uses, yet please spread these advanced concepts and futuristic ideas far and wide! Mr. Laffoley is represented by KENT Gallery, NYC. Refer to Douglas Walla for image-use arrangements and purchase of original works They will be publishing the Laffoley "Catalogue Raisonne" of complete works and extended commentary by Paul in 2008-2009 |
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