Illustrators of the Divine Comedy find it hard to graduate from Hell, easy going for all the arts, to Paradise, which can look dreary by comparison. The Inferno, after all, is of the earth - an interesting place - aligned with the loins of Lucifer, the gigantic armature which holds the damned in their place. Dante's Paradise is about unmitigated light, before it drains through the spheres to the earth. Nature, St Thomas explains in Canto xiii, cannot transmit these remains of the divine day, but fumbles them 'like an artificer/Who knows his trade but has a trembling hand'. There is far more scope for the artist in the observation of this fumbling than in the blinding effect of heavenly effulgence.

LRB 5 April 2001 | PDF Download