Description
First edition of this scarce study of Dante, with illustrations by Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936), the first significant professional woman artist in modern Scotland and a key figure in the arts and crafts movement. Traquair’s artistic output was varied and prolific: her surviving work includes illustrations, embroidery, bookbindings, illuminated manuscripts, and architecture. Her best-known work is the Mansfield Place Church, which has been called “Edinburgh’s Sistine Chapel” (NLS). Her illustrated works have been described as containing “an intensity of colour and tactile value”, and from 1900 her studio crafts “included the fashionable art of enamelling alongside book cover tooling and art embroidery” (ODNB). The present work was a collaboration between Traquair and two Edinburgh theologians and bibliophiles: John Sutherland Black, who provides the notes, and Alexander Whyte, who supplies a bibliography of The Divine Comedy and an account of Dante’s library (“an alphabetical catalogue of authors whom he is known to have used, or who may be presumed to be more or less familiar to him”). Good condition with signs of wear, rubbing/bumping to the spine, edges and corners of the book. A fine crack along the hinge of the FFEP, an inscription on the next page. No tissue guard on the title page to protect the picture, gilt to the top of the page edges, rough cut pages and some foxing through out the book. (see photos)