This volume includes color reproductions and a brief entry by Jonas Storsve entitled “The Shepheardes Calender” in English and French. Storsve notes Edmund Spenser as the author of the poem from which the drawings take their name. He describes Twombly’s production of the drawings in 1977 in Bassano in Teverina and the exhibition and publication history of the cycle. The volume was printed in an edition of 1,000 numbered copies.

For more on these drawings and Twombly’s engagement with Spenser more generally, see also: Cy Twombly, published by the Centre Pompidou (2016); Cy Twombly: Œuvres sur papier 1973–1977, Musée de Grenoble (2023); Cy Twombly: Serien auf papier 1957–1987, published by the Centre Cultural de la Fundació de Pensions (1987); Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016); Thierry Greub’s Inscriptions (2022); and Writings on Cy Twombly, ed. Nicola Del Roscio (2002). The artworks were originally published by Anthony d’Offay Gallery in The Shepheardes Calender (1985), in which the artworks accompany a calendar for the following year; note that this volume includes no discursive text.

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Edmund Spenser. The Shepheardes Calendar.  Edited by Jonas Storsve. Illustrated by Cy Twombly. Published by Édition Dilecta, Paris, 2016. English/French edition.