Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321)
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) great
Italian poet, born in Florence into a noble family.
See: Alessandro Botticelli Portrait
of Dante.
Andrea del Castagno. Dante
Allighieri.
Luca Signorelli. Dante
with Scenes from the Divine Comedy.
La Vita Nuova
According to his work
La Vita Nuova (1292) Dante fell
in love with Beatrice Portinari (1265-1290) when they were both only 9.
And this love to her he bore through all his life. Many paintings, based
on the episodes from Vita Nuova, were created by the 19th century
painter
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
See: Dante Gabriel Rossetti The
First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel.
Dante
recalls how he drew an angel on the anniversary of Beatrice's death:
'and while I did this, chancing to turn my head, I perceived that some
were standing beside me to whom I should have given courteous welcome,
and that they were observing what I did... perceiving whom, I arose for
salutation, and said: "Another was with me".
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Beatrice
Meeting Dante at a Marriage Feast, Denies Him Her Salutation.
Dante
Gabriel Rossetti Dantis
Amor. (Dante’s Love) was the central panel of three, the others
showing the earthly and heavenly salutations of Beatrice; all three were
painted on a cupboard door. Love stands in front of a diagonally divided
sky with the head of Christ in the upper left, and that of Beatrice in
the lower right. Love is holding an unfinished sundial, which would have
shown the time to be nine o'clock, nine being the mystic number, which
Dante associated with Beatrice.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Beata
Beatrix is a portrait of Rossetti’s dead wife, Elizabeth Siddal.
Once again the subject comes from Dante’s
Vita Nuova, and shows
the mystical translation of Beatrice from earth to heaven. On the right
stands Dante, staring across to the Angel of Love. Beatrice sits beside
a sundial on which the shadow falls on nine, the hour of her death on 9
June 1290. A red bird, the messenger of death, drops a poppy, the symbol
of sleep, into her folded hands.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante’s
Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice. The subject from
Vita
Nuova in which Dante dreams of being led by Love to see the dead Beatrice
on her bier.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. La
Donna della Fiamma, The Lady of the Flame, a subject inspired
by the lines in Dante’s Vita Nuova:
Whatever her sweet eyes are turned upon,
Spirits of Love issue thence in Flame,
Which through their eyes who then may look on them
Piece to the Heart’s deep chamber every one.
In
his most celebrated work the
Divine Comedy, Dante narrates
a journey through Hell and Purgatory, guided by Virgil, and finally to
Paradise, guided by Beatrice. The Divine Comedy gives an
encyclopedic view of the highest culture and knowledge of the age all expressed
in the most exquisite poetry. It was highly appreciated both by his contemporaries
and following generations. Many artists took the subjects from the Divine
Comedy for their paintings.
See: Eugène Delacroix The
Barque of Dante.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante’s
Vision of Rachel and Leah. Dante, guided through Purgatory
by Virgil, dreams of a meadow where Rachel, posed for by Lizzie Siddal,
sits on a stone basin above a stream looking at her reflection in the water,
while her sister Leah collects branches of honeysuckle with which to make
a garland. The figure in the background is Dante.
The subject of Dante Gabriel Rossetti La
Pia de’Tolomei is
taken from the final lines of Canto V of the Dante’s Purgatorio,
in which the poet describes his meeting with La Pia. She had been imprisoned
in a fortress in the Maremma, a marshy region on the Tuscan coast, and
eventually killed, deliberately or through neglect, by her husband.
