I've always had a soft spot for the French artist Currado Malaspina. His work is so unapologetically self-indulgent that one can hardly find fault with his conceptual solipsism.
He has apparently fallen in love with Dante - or more specifically, with Beatrice Portinari. His latest project, the illumination of the Commedia in three lushly ornamented artist books, is truly a tour-de-force. Though I can appreciate his brave commitment to the easily accessible Inferno and the more difficult Puragtorio, his treatment of Paradiso is almost creepy in its obsessions.
Malaspina's Beatrice is no longer Dante's conduit to the divine. She is more of a living, sweaty seductress who has sternly lured the poet into her heavenly domain only to ravish and reward him for his decades long devotion.
Medievalists would no doubt take issue with this interpretation but Currado has never been inhibited by his ignorance.
