Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car

Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car from 1820 illustrates an episode from the Purgatorio in which Beatrice appears to Dante in a triumphal procession. Blake's illustrations to Dante occupied his final years and represent some of his most ambitious visionary compositions. Blake created the work using his distinctive tempera or watercolor technique, combined with his personal mythological vision that placed him outside the mainstream of British art while anticipating later Symbolist and Romanti

The processional composition combines Blake's linear precision with rich watercolor washes, the celestial chariot and surrounding figures rendered with the intensity of his mature visionary style.