More Dalinean Goodness!

Here’s some interesting follow up on the “Combat” image beyond the jump in the post below.  It was one of a series of compositions he did as illustrations for a new 700 year commemorative edition of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante.  Ultimately he did 100 watercolors for the entire three volume set.  All of these watercolors were then done as hand-carved woodblock prints by master artisans.  Sometime later art collectors became interested in the illustrations themselves and many of the books were taken apart to sell the individual illustrations.  A full set of the hand-signed illustrations costs around $29,000.  No watercolor version of “Combat” was done and it is not included in the final version. 

I used to own two of these unsigned illustrations.  One was destroyed when the apartment I was living in got flooded.  The other hangs on my wall now.  Below is a signed version of the one that I still have.

 

Note that the bottom drawer requires a key.

The one that got ruined had a version of the Great Masturbator incorporated into it.  Great indeed was the wailing and gnashing of teeth the day I discovered that.