The theme of this end-of-year art and photography edition is “The Divine Comedy,” after Dante Alighieri’s epic poem written in the first years of the 14th century. Its three sections are titled Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. As Dante is led on a tour of the nine circles of hell by the ghost of the poet Virgil, the spirit tells him (in John Ciardi’s translation), “Your soul is sunken in that cowardice/ that bears down many men, turning their course/ and resolution by imagined perils,/ as his own shadow turns the frightened horse.” Later, with his eyes opened, Dante responds, “O sun which clears all mists from troubled sight,/ such joy attends your rising that I feel/ as grateful to the dark as to the light.”
We are grateful to the 15 artists and photographers who have reflected on paradise, purgatory, and hell for these pages and helped us create a New Year’s message to the Independent’s readers. We send you our heartfelt wishes for sunshine, courage, and joy. —The editors.
Inferno by Felipe Ortiz
The Journey by Barbara E. Cohen
Thank You, Norma by Mary DeAngelis
By Edward Boches
By Traci Harmon-Hay
And So It Goes… by Ellen LeBow
Get in Line by Sian Robertson
Highland Lighthouse Emerges by Nancy Bloom
From an Outer Cape Village, 2021 by Marnie Crawford Samuelson
Dante’s Inferno 2021 by Laura Shabott
Girl Dancing, Fermanagh by Rachel Brown
By A. Crock
By Mark Adams
After Dante (The Inferno) by Daniel Dejean
The Beginning of Always by Marian Roth
