Canto XX/3: Mantua

Silkscreen page proof approved by the artist and signed / initialled by him, taken from the original Talford Press edition of 185, printed on 100% rag, acid-free Inveresk (Somerset) paper

page size 39.5 x 31 cm

1979 – 1983

Virgil remembers the Mantuan landscape of his early years and this provides a pastoral interlude, albeit darkened by the story of the Manto, the sorceress and founder of Mantua. The landscape is a fragment of a painting by that city’s other great son, Andrea Mantegna, framed by quasi-alchemical and Cabbalistic signs.