Created and published when Spare was 18 years old. “Influenced heavily by Dante’s Inferno the book is decorated with poems and aphorisms in an aesthetic style and clearly shows the design influence of Spare’s early supporter Charles Ricketts. Each pair of pages contains a painting and a commentary toward that painting. In addition to excerpts from Dante, the book also contains excerpts from Edward FitzGerald‘s translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” –wikipedia
“London: Privately Published. 1905. First Edition. Hardcover. Folio (18″ x 13.75”). 30pp. … Eleven large black and white illustrations (mostly full page) and numerous decorations by Spare throughout. The scarce first edition of Spare’s first published book, SIGNED and numbered by the author. The book was printed for Spare at the Co-operative Printing Society in Tudor Street, London, in February 1905, in an edition of 265 signed and numbered copies… Earth Inferno was a truly remarkable first book. In it the young artist juxtaposed huge, sometimes sinister images with teasing lyrics to create a vivid image of the darkly magical philosophy which informed his world-view.” —Weiser Antiquarian Books
“Sophie Giacomelli (1779-1819) is the earliest known female illustrator of Dante. Her engravings were published in 1813 – some years after John Flaxman’s ground-breaking, privately printed, neo-classical outline illustrations in 1793. Giacomelli has patently imitated the style but her Divine Comedie has undoubtable unique approaches, as this engraving of The Simonists (Canto XIX, Inferno) demonstrate. The popes are plunged head down into infernal holes so that only their flaming feet are seen. But it’s how this illustrator has captured Dante’s occasional ‘scaredy-cat’ episodes by having him caught in the arms of his strong and protective guide, Virgil. Giacomelli was also known as Billet (father’s name), Janinet (her stepfather’s name) and Madame Chomel. I’ve not been able to find information on this last name – which may have been a stage-name (she sang as well, after meeting up with her musician husband, Joseph Giacomelli). She was, by the briefest accounts available, a most impressive woman and it was many decades before another female had her Dante designs published. She is very rarely mentioned in Dante illustration.” –Emma Marigliano
