Doré's Illustrations for Ariosto's `Orlando Furioso`

A Selection of 208 Illustrations

Gustave Doré

• Editorial: Dover Publications
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486141015
• Categoría: Art
• Categoría: Artist Monographs

This collection contains 208 of Dore's finest illustrations for Ariosto's magnificent epic poem, painstakingly reproduced from a beautifully printed 19th century German edition. The illustrations range from brilliant quick sketches to highly finished and shaded studies, many of which convey an incomparable feeling of metaphysical gloom. Against this stark backdrop, a panorama of jousting knights, damsels in distress, heroic deeds, romantic interludes, and mystical events comes to life under Doré's exuberant pen style.

INTRODUCTION

The outstanding nineteenth-century French book illustrator Gustave Doré (1832-1883) wanted his name to be associated with the greatest possible number of classics of world literature. To mention just high points, his Perrault appeared in 1861, his Don Quixote in 1863, his Paradise Lost and Bible in 1866, his La Fontaine in 1867, his complete Divine Comedy in 1868, his definitive Rabelais in 1873 and his Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1875.

Doré’s last major undertaking was the 618, illustrations for Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, the major epic poem of the Italian Renaissance, which was to be endlessly influential in form and content (Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Byron’s Don Juan are just three of the works indebted to Ariosto). Always intrigued by medieval settings, battles, amorous escapades, monsters and sorcerers, Doré must have welcomed the challenges offered by Ariosto’s unbridled imagination and sly humor, and by the world-ranging adventures contained in the great poem.

Lodovico (or Ludovico) Ariosto, born at Reggio Emilia in 1474, moved to the duchy of Ferrara when he was ten, and spent his life—as courtier, diplomat, travel companion, military governor—in the service of the Ferrarese ruling family. His master from 1503 to 1517 was Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, brother of the Duke of Ferrara; from 1518 on, Ariosto served the Duke himself. Author of several other poems and of significant plays, Ariosto is best known for his huge epic (46 cantos, each containing from 72 to 199 eight-line stanzas in ottava rima), of which the first edition appeared in 1516 and the third (last in the author’s lifetime) in 1532.

Like all Renaissance literature, Orlando Furioso borrows many themes and details directly from Greek and Roman sources, but its large-scale structure is basically a clever intermingling of two epic strands that had been strongly developed in medieval literature. One of these strands was the Charlemagne legend, in which the historical Frankish king Charles the Great (742-814) was elevated to the position of sacred defender of European soil against Islam, with his nephew Roland as his doughtiest champion. The other chief strand was the vast Arthurian cycl...