The drawings after Dante, at first dividing Blake's time with the engravings of the Job, engrossed nearly the whole of it during the brief remnant of his life. They amount to a hundred in all, scarcely any quite finished; presenting his conceptions in all stages, in fact, from the bare outline to high finish.
These designs (which will be found catalogued, with a few remarks, in List No. 1 of the Annotated Catalogue, vol. ii.) form the largest series ever undertaken by Blake, except those from Young and Gray, which number 537 and 118 subjects respectively; and, from the profound interest and the variety and special nature of the subject, not to speak of the merits of the designs themselves, they maintain a high rank among his performances. It was a great labour for a man of ' threescore years and ten' to undertake; and a labour which, in its result, exhibits no symptom of age or feebleness. The designs, it is true, are scarcely ever carried to full completion, and are often extremely slight; but the power of mind, eye, hand—the power of grappling with a new subject matter, and making all its parts, so to speak, organic—is in no wise dimmed. The conception is not always such as most students of Dante will be willing to admit as Dantesque, though certainly much more Dantesque than the refined performance of Flaxman, or than any other known to me; it is, at any rate, the highly creative mind of Dante filtered through the highly creative, sympathetic mind of Blake.
Blake lived to engrave only seven, published in 1827, These seven, all from the Hell, are —
1. The Circle of the Lustful—Paolo and Francesca.
2. The Circle of the Corrupt Officials—The Devils tormenting Ciampolo.
3. Same Circle—The Devils mauling each other.
4. The Circle of the Thieves—Agnolo Brunnelleschi attacked by the serpent.
5. Same Circle—Buoso Donati attacked by the serpent.
