Original Board by Salvador Dalì – "The Bite of Gianni Schicchi" Divine Comedy Inferno Canto XXX (30).

An original board created using a woodcut technique in color on BFK Rives paper. The panel portrays an extract from the Spanish master's most important body of illustrations: 100 panels depicting the three parts of the Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

Dalì spent ten years completing the sketches which gave life to these xylographs (1950 to 1959) finally presenting them to the public in 1960 in the Palais Gallièra in Paris. The panels were substantially created to interpret and reinvent Dalì's own imagination regarding the verses of the 'Divine Comedy', emanating shapes and colors from the grotesque, to the sacreligious, ironic, dramatic, sensual, ecstatic, allegorical and unexpectedly elegant and sublime. 

"I wanted my illustrations for Dante to become like light imprints of humidity on a divine cheese. Which led to their multi-coloured butterfly-wing aspect".

Salvador Dalì commenting his xylographs dedicated to 'La Divina Commedia'.

The panel has been professionally mounted with a splendid passepartout, the color of which has been chosen to reflect the colors of the panel.

Dimensions of the piece with passepartout: 29.5 x 36 cm

Subject of the Canto: Still in the X Bolgia of the VIII Circle (Malebolge) where the fraudulent are punished. Apparition of falsifiers of people, including Gianni Schicchi and Mirras. Meeting with monetary falsifiers: Mastro Adamo. Falsifiers of word: Sinon and Potiphar's wife. Fight between Sinon and Mastro Adamo. Virgil bitterly reprimands Dante. 

N.B The photo of the piece when mounted may show slight differences in the color compared to that shown on display.