Graphite and watercolour on paper
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Art Fund
Illustrations to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-blake-39" aria-label="More by William Blake" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Blake</a>
Dante in Empyrean Drinking at River Light
Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the Art Fund, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the Art Fund 1919
abstract concepts
actions: postures and motions
adults
art and craft
artist, painter
artist, printmaker
arts - Urizen
arts and entertainment
aura
Beatrice
bush
characters
Dante
Dante, ‘Divine Comedy: Paradiso’
drinking
easel
eating and drinking
emotional states and conditions
Enion
fine arts and music
Heaven
imagination - river of light
kneeling
landscape
leisure and pastimes
literary
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
man
mysticism
mythical, religious, fictional
nature
nature - Enion
objects
painting
people
picture
places
plants and flowers
poet
reading, writing, printed matter
religion and belief
river
scroll
symbols and personifications
Urizen
Vala
water: inland
woman
wooded
work and occupations
<p>In this scene from <span>The Divine Comedy </span>the poet Dante has reached paradise, where he is met by his dead beloved, Beatrice. In this infinite space of light, love and joy, Dante drinks from a river of light. Beatrice sits on the lower right. Blake has invented the two figures in the upper half of the work. They might represent the spiritual forms of Art and Nature, residing in eternity. While <span>The Divine Comedy</span> clearly sparked Blake’s imagination, Dante’s beliefs—especially his emphasis on sin and punishment—didn’t sit easily with his own. Blake was critical of organised religion and its restrictions on spiritual life.</p><p><em>Gallery label, June 2024</em></p>
paper unique graphite watercolour
8 July 2002 – 1 October 2003
2003-10-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
William Blake Body and Soul
Collection based display
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
2002-07-08
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
Body and Soul
Collection based display
24 March 2003 – 17 November 2003
2003-11-17
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-03-24
Blake and Illustration
Collection based display
7 October 2008 – 4 January 2009
2009-01-04
7 October 2008 – 4 January 2009
2009-01-04
2008-10-07
New Art Gallery Walsall (Walsall, UK)
http://www.artatwalsall.org.uk/
2008-10-07
William Blake: Angels and Imagination
Loan-out
13 May 2013 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
13 May 2013 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
2013-05-13
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2013-05-13
William Blake
Collection based display
24 June 2024
24 June 2024
2024-06-24
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2024-06-24
Blake
Collection based display
Dante in the Empyrean, Drinking at the River of Light
support: 528 × 371 mm
Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a>, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 1919
<div><p><span>In this scene from </span><i>The Divine Comedy </i><span>the poet Dante has reached paradise, where he is met by his dead beloved, Beatrice. In this infinite space of light, love and joy, Dante drinks from a river of light. Beatrice sits on the lower right. Blake has invented the two figures in the upper half of the work. They might represent the spiritual forms of Art and Nature, residing in eternity. While </span><i>The Divine Comedy</i><span> clearly sparked Blake’s imagination, Dante’s beliefs—especially his emphasis on sin and punishment—didn’t sit easily with his own. Blake was critical of organised religion and its restrictions on spiritual life.</span></p></div>
Display caption
2024-06-06T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-dante-in-the-empyrean-drinking-at-the-river-of-light-n03370" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N03370</span></a> <b>Dante in the Empyrean, Drinking at the River of Light</b>
1824–7
<br/></p>
<p>N 03370 / B 812 <i>98</i>
<br/>Pencil and watercolour 528×371 (20 3/4×14 5/8)
<br/>Inscribed ‘Par. Canto 30’ in ink over ‘Paradiso Canto 30’ in pencil b.r. and, on reverse in pencil, ‘N49 next at p16’ t.c., ‘37’ t.r. and ‘Hell Canto 26’ b.r., the last with the page turned through a right-angle
<br/>Watermarked ‘WE’
<br/>Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the National Art-Collections Fund, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the National Art-Collections Fund 1919
<br/>PROVENANCE As for <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-dante-and-virgil-penetrating-the-forest-n03351" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N03351</span></a>
<br/>EXHIBITED Tate Gallery 1947 (63); <i>British Painting</i> Hamburg, Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen 1949–50(3)
<br/>LITERATURE Rossetti 1863, p.223 no.103i, and 1880, p.234 no.125i; Roe 1953, pp.189–93 no.98, repr.; Klonsky 1980, pp.161–2, pl.101; Butlin 1981, p.587 no.812 <i>98</i>; Gizzi 1983, p.179 repr.
<br/></p>
<p>This is the only illustration in the Tate Gallery to <i>Paradiso</i>: XXX, 61–96. This does in fact reflect the relative paucity of illustrations to Dante's third book, ten as opposed to twenty illustrations to <i>Purgatorio</i>
and seventy-two to <i>Inferno</i>, though Blake might well have rectified this inbalance had he lived to complete the series. Dante, with Beatrice, has now left the heaven of space to enter the infinite heaven of light, love and joy, through which runs a stream of light in the form of a river. The poet kneels drinking on the left, while Beatrice is on the right.
<br/>
<br/>The other figures do not appear in Dante's text. Those on the left, above Dante, symbolise the arts, represented by an aged poet (identified by Roe as the regenerate Urizen) together with a scene of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> and <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraving</span></a>. On the other side, according to Roe, is the realm of Nature, represented by Enion, Blake's ‘Earth-Mother’, while Beatrice is equated with Vala, the Female Will. The sparkles in the water are shown as tiny figures, ‘infant joys’. The whole scene thus represents, according to Roe's interpretation, Art and Nature raised to the Eternal World through the agency of the River of Divine Imagination; even the figures normally condemned in Blake's mythology, Urizen, Enion and Vala, are here shown in their positive aspects.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-05T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
abstract concepts actions: postures and motions adults art and craft artist, painter artist, printmaker arts and entertainment arts - Urizen aura Beatrice bush characters Dante Dante, ‘Divine Comedy: Paradiso’ drinking easel eating and drinking emotional states and conditions Enion fine arts and music Heaven imagination - river of light kneeling landscape leisure and pastimes literary literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) man mysticism mythical, religious, fictional nature nature - Enion objects painting people picture places plants and flowers poet reading, writing, printed matter religion and belief river scroll symbols and personifications Urizen Vala water: inland woman wooded work and occupations