The Inferno, the first and most familiar of three sections of The Divine Comedy, was completed early in the 14th century, by the poet Dante Alighieri while in exile from his beloved city of Florence. The poem, written in the vernacular Italian rather than Latin, expands the traditional troubadour love song/poem into a journey defining the human condition. Its exploration of sin and weakness retains its universality because we still recognize all of its elements in our own time and in ourselves. The Inferno is a poem of despair, sadness and loss culminating in the hope and ultimate redemption that Dante, the pilgrim, finds in the Purgatory and Paradiso, which complete the Divine Comedy. The long history of illustrations of this poem traditionally includes the figures of Dante and Virgil on their journey. Michael Mazur has chosen to show what they saw rather than their seeing of it.
TWO VOLUMES, BOUND FORMAT
PORTFOLIO FORMAT
In 1993, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published to great acclaim The Inferno of Dante, translated by Robert Pinsky a illustrated with reproductions of monotypes by Michael Mazur. Now in this new suite of forty-one etchings, Mazur makes the Inferno images available as original prints. His new version extends and deepens the record of his lifelong reading of Dante's poem. Each image faces the relevant excerpted portion of Dante's poem in Italian with Pinsky's English translation. Presented in two beautifully designed formats, one format contains two bound volumes, the other is portfolio bound, with loose pages. This is a communion of three masters: the Italian poet, his premier modern translator, and a contemporary master in the art of printmaking. This website contains a complete set of the images and the texts that they relate to, in Italian and in English.
IMAGES AND TEXTS
ARTIST'S BIOGRAPHY
EXHIBITIONS
OTHERS HAVE WRITTEN
For more information, or to purchase a copy, contact:
Mary Ryan Gallery 24 W. 57th Street NY, NY 10019
info@MaryRyanGallery.com telephone: 212.397.0669
or email: mbzur@comcast.com
copyright © Michael Mazur and Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1993/2003