Angela Cavalieri & Peter Lyssiotis

1316 is a trilogy of artist’s books by Angela Cavalieri and Peter Lyssiotis, created between 2004 and 2013, each of the three volumes reflecting a book of the Divine Comedy. 1316 is believed to be the year Dante completed the Inferno.

Each volume utilises linocuts, giclée and screenprints, accompanied by painted and handwritten texts, the imagery of which was originally inspired by Cavalieri’s photographs documenting inscriptions in the interiors of Italian churches. With these, and Dante’s text, as a starting point, Lyssiotis has composed a series of evocative axioms – “I make a deep hole of myself and wait to snare my God”, for example –  over around which both abstract forms and resonant photographic images from the modern world have been layered.

Colour and geometry form the architecture of each volume though, delivered as both illustrated image and cut-out shape, which gives the books a sculptural element. Book I, reflecting the Inferno, is built around a succession of nine concentric circles in rich reds, yellows and blacks, representing the journey down through the Circles of Hell. Purgatory is similarly represented with seven triangle motifs in Book II to signify the ascension of the seven terraces; and Book III with the sacred geometry of the square in whites, calming blues, and ultimately gold, denoting the nine celestial realms and the Empyrean, God’s dwelling place.