Rachel Owen: Illustrations for Dante's 'Inferno'

Published here for the first time, these illustrations of Dante&;s Inferno offer a radical new approach to the poem. Before her death in 2016, the artist Rachel Owen began an ambitious project: illustrating The Divine Comedy. This volume includes the completed illustrations for Dante&;s Inferno, which cast the viewer as a first-person pilgrim through the underworld. These illustrations combine the artist&;s deep cultural and historical understanding of the text and its artistic legacy with her unique talent for collage and printmaking. With their unique perspective and visual language, Owen&;s illustrations prompt us to rethink Dante&;s poem. Owen&;s work, held in the Bodleian Library and published here for the first time, illustrates the complete cycle of thirty-four cantos of the Inferno, with one image per canto. In essays contextualizing Owen&;s work, Fiona Whitehouse provides details of the techniques employed by the artist, Peter Hainsworth situates Owen&;s work in the field of modern Dante illustration, and David Bowe offers a commentary on the illustrations as gateways to Dante&;s poem. Jamie McKendrick and Bernard O&;Donoghue&;s translations of episodes from the Inferno provide complementary artistic interpretations of Dante&;s poem, while reflections from colleagues and friends commemorate Owen&;s life and work as an artist, scholar, and teacher.