My interest in Dante’s Divine Comedy began after attending a lecture at the Royal Academy in London. The lecturer spoke about the text with such enthusiasm that I felt compelled to read it myself — good teachers have that effect 😊. Fortunately, a Dutch translation was published by Athenaeum in 2021, beautifully translated by Ike Cialona and Peter Verstegen.
My understanding of Dante’s work owes much to that book and the Digital Dante website. From these two sources, I selected a few lines in Italian, English, and Dutch that inspired me to create a watercolor sketch for each Canto.
I consider myself an amateur in many of the things I do, and certainly in art, so I am still learning. To make that learning more challenging, I decided to create all my watercolour sketches using only three colours and liquid charcoal by Schmincke. The first sketch was made using only this medium and is not connected to a specific canto, but was inspired by a ballet performance that I saw in London and based on Dante’s work. You can see the rest of my work on a separate page.
The other three colours are: Hansa yellow deep by Daniel Smith, Antwerp blue by Winsor & Newton and Alizarin Crimson by Winsor & Newton. The paper I used is Khadi Papers (A5 format 320 gsm) made from recycled cotton rags.
