During the 1950s, Salvador Dal began working on a series of watercolor illustrations to accompany Dantes Divine Comedy. These illustrations, which follow the trajectory of Dantes journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, were commissioned by the Italian government to mark the 700th anniversary of Dantes birth in 1965. The prints consist of one hundred color woodcuts, which carefully recreate Dals watercolors, capturing their subtle washes of color and delicate linear drawing. Dals illustrations of Dantes Divine Comedy are far from a literal engagement with the medieval Italian text. Implementing a psychoanalytic lens, Dal extracts the metaphoric potential of Dantes poetry using aesthetic idiom to represent surrealist explorations of the unconscious and subconscious.