When Dalí, who died in 1989, finished the project [illustrating the “Divine Comedy”], he had completed 100 watercolors for the poem’s 14,233 lines: 34 illustrating Inferno, 33 illustrating Purgatory and 33 illustrating Paradise.

Then, over several years, artisans carved 3,500 wood blocks to make prints of the original watercolor illustrations for the book, which was published in the early 1960s. Some of those prints required up to 37 individual blocks to impress each of its colors of ink, one at a time.

(Christine Hauser, “Is That a Dalí Among the Tchotchkes?” NYTimes, 3-13-20)

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