FLAXMAN.

Compositions from The Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri by John Flaxman, sculptor.

      London. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme. 1807. Oblong Engraved title page and 110 engravings. Contemporary morocco-backed boards, slightly rubbed. Some foxing to plates, mainly light and in the margins. In 1792 Thomas Hope commissioned from Flaxman 109 drawings to illustrate The Divine Comedy. He then had them engraved by Piroli for a small private edition which not even the artist's friends were allowed to subscribe to. But enough copies were in circulation for both Goethe and A.W. von Schlegel to have seen them by the time they wrote their enthusiastic assessments of Flaxman in 1799. Probably because a pirated French edition appeared in 1802, a public English one was issued in 1807 at four guineas.