“This Dante,” he says, “was an honourable and ancient citizen of Florence, belonging to the Porta San Piero, and our neighbour. . . . This man was a great scholar in almost every branch of learning, although he was a layman: he was a great poet and philosopher, and a perfect rhetorician both in prose and verse, and in public debate he was a very noble speaker; in rime he was supreme, with the most polished and beautiful style that ever had been in our language, up to his time and since. . . . This Dante, on account of his great learning, was somewhat haughty and reserved and scornful, and after the manner of a philosopher little gracious, not adapting himself to the conversation of the unlearned. But on account of his other virtues and knowledge and worth, it seems right to perpetuate the memory of so great a citizen in this our chronicle, albeit that his noble works left to us in writing are the true testimony to his fame and a lasting honour to our city.”6
* * *
1 See above, p. 103 note.
2 This anecdote was quoted in a letter written in 1624 by Lord Keeper Williams to the Duke of Buckingham, in which he tried to persuade the Duke to accept the office of Lord Steward. “I will trouble your grace,” he writes, “with a tale of Dante, the first Italian Poet of Note: who, being a great and wealthy Man in Florence, and his Opinion demanded who should be sent Embassador to the Pope? made this Answer, that he knew not who; Si jo vo, chi sta, si jo sto, chi va; If I go, I know not who shall stay at Home; If I stay, I know not who can perform this Employment” (see Paget Toynbee, Dante in English Literature, vol. i. p. 117).
3 There are several passages in the Divina Commedia which seem to hint at Dante’s consciousness of this failing (see above, p. 71).
4 Vita di Dante, ed. Macrì-Leone, §§ 8, 12, pp. 43-7, 59-62.
5 See above, p. 37 note.
6 Bk. ix. ch. 136.
CHAPTER II
Portraits of Dante—The Giotto portrait in the Bargello—Norton’s account of the Bargello portrait—Its disappearance and rediscovery—The death-mask—Its relation to the portrait—The Naples bronze—Portrait by Taddeo Gaddi—The Riccardi portrait—The picture by Domenico di Michelino.
FROM the written descriptions of Dante the transition is natural to the subject of the actual representation of the poet’s face, depicted during his lifetime.
Of portraits from the life, so far as is known, there is one only, that most beautiful of all the portraits of Dante, painted by Giotto, the great Florentine artist, whose fame is inseparably connected with that of the great Florentine poet. An interesting account of this portrait, of its disappearance and rediscovery, together with a comparison of it with the mask supposed to have been modelled from Dante’s face after death, is given by Professor Charles Eliot Norton, in his work On the Original Portraits of Dante, which was published in 1865 in honour of the six-hundredth anniversary of the poet’s birth. After quoting Boccaccio’s description of Dante’s physiognomy, which has already been given above, Professor Norton writes:–
“Such was Dante as he appeared in his later years to those from whose recollections of him Boccaccio drew this description. But Boccaccio, had he chosen so to do, might have drawn another portrait of Dante, not the author of the Divine Comedy, but the author of the New Life. The likeness of the youthful Dante was familiar to those Florentines who had never looked on the presence of their greatest citizen.
PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO IN THE BARGELLO AT FLORENCE
From a drawing by Seymour Kirkup
“On the altar-wall of the chapel of the Palace of the Podestà (now the Bargello) Giotto painted a grand religious composition, in which, after the fashion of the times, he exalted the glory of Florence by the introduction of some of her most famous citizens into the assembly of the blessed in Paradise. ‘The head of Christ, full of dignity, appears above, and lower down, the escutcheon of Florence, supported by angels, with two rows of saints, male and female, attendant to the right and left, in front of whom stand a company of the magnates of the city, headed by two crowned personages, close to one of whom, to the right, stands Dante, a pomegranate in his hand, and wearing the graceful falling cap of the day.’1 The date when this picture was painted is uncertain, but Giotto represented his friend in it as a youth, such as he may have been in the first flush of early fame, at the season of the beginning of their memorable friendship.
“Of all the portraits of the revival of Art, there is none comparable in interest to this likeness of the supreme poet by the supreme artist of mediæval Europe. It was due to no accident of fortune that these men were contemporaries and of the same country; but it was a fortunate and delightful incident, that they were so brought together by sympathy of genius and by favouring circumstances as to become friends, to love and honour each other in life, and to celebrate each other through all time in their respective works.2 The story of their friendship is known only in its outline, but that it began when they were young is certain, and that it lasted till death divided them is a tradition which finds ready acceptance.
“It was probably between 1290 and 1300, when Giotto was just rising to unrivalled fame, that this painting was executed.3 There is no contemporary record of it, the earliest known reference to it being that by Filippo Villani,4 who died about 1404. Giannozzo Manetti, who died in 1459, also mentions it;5 and Vasari, in his Life of Giotto, published in 1550, says that Giotto ‘became so good an imitator of nature, that he altogether discarded the stiff Greek manner, and revived the modern and good art of painting, introducing exact drawing from nature of living persons, which for more than two hundred years had not been practised, or if indeed any one had tried it, he had not succeeded very happily, nor anything like so well as Giotto. And he portrayed among other persons, as may even now be seen, in the chapel of the Palace of the Podestà in Florence, Dante Alighieri, his contemporary and greatest friend, who was not less famous a poet than Giotto was painter in those days. . . . In the same chapel is the portrait by the same hand of Ser Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, and of Messer Corso Donati, a great citizen of those times.’
“One might have supposed that such a picture as this would have been among the most carefully protected and jealously prized treasures of Florence. But such was not the case. The shameful neglect of many of the best and most interesting works of the earlier period of Art, which accompanied and was one of the symptoms of the moral and political decline of Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, extended to this as to other of the noblest paintings of Giotto. Florence, in losing consciousness of present worth, lost care for the memorials of her past honour, dignity, and distinction. The Palace of the Podestà, no longer needed for the dwelling of the chief magistrate of a free city, was turned into a jail for common criminals, and what had once been its beautiful and sacred chapel was occupied as a larder or storeroom.6 The walls, adorned with paintings more precious than gold, were covered with whitewash, and the fresco of Giotto was swept over by the brush of the plasterer. It was not only thus hidden from the sight of those unworthy indeed to behold it, but it almost disappeared from memory also; and from the time of Vasari down to that of Moreni, a Florentine antiquary, in the early part of the present century,7 hardly a mention of it occurs. In a note found among his papers, Moreni laments that he had spent two years of his life in unavailing efforts to recover the portrait of Dante, and the other portions of the fresco of Giotto in the Bargello, mentioned by Vasari; that others before him had made a like effort, and had failed in like manner; and that he hoped that better times would come, in which this painting, of such historic and artistic interest, would again be sought for, and at length recovered. Stimulated by these words, three gentlemen, one an American, Mr. Richard Henry Wilde, one an Englishman, Mr. Seymour Kirkup, and one an Italian, Signor G. Aubrey Bezzi, all scholars devoted to the study of Dante, undertook new researches, in 1840, and, after many hindrances on the part of the Government,8 which were at length successfully overcome, the work of removing the crust of plaster from the walls of the ancient ch
apel was entrusted to the Florentine painter, Marini. This new and well-directed search did not fail. After some months’ labour the fresco was found,9 almost uninjured, under the whitewash that had protected while concealing it, and at length the likeness of Dante was uncovered.10
“‘But,’ says Mr. Kirkup, in a letter11 published in the Spectator (London), 11 May, 1850, ‘the eye of the beautiful profile was wanting. There was a hole an inch deep, or an inch and a half. Marini said it was a nail. It did seem precisely the damage of a nail drawn out. Afterwards . . . Marini filled the hole and made a new eye, too little and ill designed, and then he retouched the whole face and clothes, to the great damage of the expression and character.12 The likeness of the face,13 and the three colours in which Dante was dressed, the same with those of Beatrice, those of young Italy, white, green, and red, stand no more; the green is turned to chocolate colour; moreover, the form of the cap is lost and confounded.
“ ‘I desired to make a drawing. . . . It was denied to me. . . . But I obtained the means to be shut up in the prison for a morning; and not only did I make a drawing,14but a tracing also, and with the two I then made a facsimile sufficiently careful. Luckily it was before the rifacimento’.
“This facsimile afterwards passed into the hands of Lord Vernon, well known for his interest in all Dantesque studies, and by his permission it has been admirably reproduced in chromo-lithography under the auspices of the Arundel Society.15 The reproduction is entirely satisfactory as a presentation of the authentic portrait of the youthful Dante, in the state in which it was when Mr. Kirkup was so fortunate as to gain admission to it.16
“This portrait by Giotto is the only likeness of Dante known to have been made of the poet during his life, and is of inestimable value on this account. But there exists also a mask, concerning which there is a tradition that it was taken from the face of the dead poet, and which, if its genuineness could be established, would not be of inferior interest to the early portrait. But there is no trustworthy historic testimony concerning it, and its authority as a likeness depends upon the evidence of truth which its own character affords. On the very threshold of the inquiry concerning it, we are met with the doubt whether the art of taking casts was practised at the time of Dante’s death. In his Life of Andrea del Verrocchio, Vasari says that this art began to come into use in his time, that is, about the middle of the fifteenth century; and Bottari refers to the likeness of Brunelleschi, who died in 1446, which was taken in this manner, and was preserved in the Office of the Works of the Cathedral at Florence. It is not impossible that so simple an art may have been sometimes practised at an earlier period;17 and if so, there is no inherent improbability in the supposition that Guido Novello, the friend and protector of Dante at Ravenna, may, at the time of the poet’s death, have had a mask taken to serve as a model for the head of a statue intended to form part of the monument which he proposed to erect in honour of Dante. And it may further be supposed that, this design failing, owing to the fall of Guido from power before its accomplishment, the mask may have been preserved at Ravenna, till we first catch a trace of it nearly three centuries later.
“There is in the Magliabecchiana Library at Florence an autograph manuscript by Giovanni Cinelli, a Florentine antiquary who died in 1706, entitled La Toscana letterata, ovvero Istoria degli Scrittori Fiorentini, which contains a life of Dante. In the course of the biography18 Cinelli states that the Archbishop of Ravenna caused the head of the poet which had adorned his sepulchre to be taken therefrom, and that it came into the possession of the famous sculptor, Gian Bologna, who left it at his death, in 1608, to his pupil Pietro Tacca. ‘One day Tacca showed it, with other curiosities, to the Duchess Sforza, who, having wrapped it in a scarf of green cloth, carried it away, and God knows into whose hands the precious object has fallen, or where it is to be found. . . . On account of its singular beauty, it had often been drawn by the scholars of Tacca.’ It has been supposed that this head was the original mask from which the casts now existing are derived. Mr. Seymour Kirkup, in a note on this passage from Cinelli, says that ‘there are three masks of Dante at Florence, all of which have been judged by the first Roman and Florentine sculptors to have been taken from life [that is, from the face after death]—the slight differences noticeable between them being such as might occur in casts made from the original mask’. One of these casts was given to Mr. Kirkup by the sculptor Bartolini, another belonged to the late sculptor, Professor Ricci,19 and the third is in the possession of the Marchese Torrigiani.20
MASK OF DANTE IN THE UFFIZI AT FLORENCE
Formerly in possession of the Marchese Torrigiani
“In the absence of historical evidence in regard to this mask, some support is given to the belief in its genuineness by the fact that it appears to be the type of the greater number of the portraits of Dante executed from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, and was adopted by Raffaelle as the original from which he drew the likeness which has done most to make the features of the poet familiar to the world.
“The character of the mask itself affords, however, the only really satisfactory ground for confidence in the truth of the tradition concerning it. It was plainly taken as a cast from a face after death.21 It has none of the characteristics which a fictitious and imaginative representation of the sort would be likely to present. It bears no trace of being a work of skilful and deceptive art.22 The difference between the sides of the face, the slight deflection in the line of the nose,23 the droop of the corners of the mouth, and other delicate, but none the less convincing indications, combine to show that it was in all probability taken from nature. The countenance, moreover, and expression, are worthy of Dante; no ideal forms could so answer to the face of him who had led a life apart from the world in which he dwelt, and had been conducted by love and faith along hard, painful, and solitary ways, to behold
“The mask conforms entirely to the description by Boccaccio of the poet’s countenance, save that it is beardless, and this difference is to be accounted for by the fact that to obtain the cast the beard must have been removed.25
“The face is one of the most pathetic upon which human eyes ever looked, for it exhibits in its expression the conflict between the strong nature of the man and the hard dealings of fortune,—between the idea of his life and its practical experience. Strength is the most striking attribute of the countenance, displayed alike in the broad forehead, the masculine nose, the firm lips, the heavy jaw and wide chin; and this strength, resulting from the main forms of the features, is enforced by the strength of the lines of expression. The look is grave and stern almost to grimness; there is a scornful lift to the eyebrow, and a contraction of the forehead as from painful thought; but obscured under this look, yet not lost, are the marks of tenderness, refinement, and self-mastery, which, in combination with more obvious characteristics, give to the countenance of the dead poet an ineffable dignity and melancholy. There is neither weakness nor failure here. It is the image of the strong fortress of a strong soul ‘buttressed on conscience and impregnable will,’ battered by the blows of enemies without and within, bearing upon its walls the dints of many a siege, but standing firm and unshaken against all attacks until the warfare was at an end.
“The intrinsic evidence for the truth of this likeness, from its correspondence, not only with the description of the poet, but with the imagination that we form of him from his life and works, is strongly confirmed by a comparison of the mask with the portrait by Giotto. So far as I am aware, this comparison has not hitherto been made in a manner to exhibit effectively the resemblance between the two. A direct comparison between the painting and the mask, owing to the difficulty of reducing the forms of the latter to a plain surface of light and shade, is unsatisfactory. But by taking a photograph from the mask,26 in the same position as that in which the face is painted by Giotto, and placing it alongside of the facsimile from the painting,27 a very remarkable similarity becomes at once apparent. In the two accompanying photograp
hs the striking resemblance between them is not to be mistaken. The differences are only such as must exist between the portrait of a man in the freshness of a happy youth, and the portrait of him in his age, after much experience and many trials. Dante was fifty-six years old at the time of his death, when the mask was taken; the portrait by Giotto represents him as not much past twenty. There is an interval of at least thirty years between the two. And what years they had been for him!
“The interest of this comparison lies not only in the mutual support which the portraits afford each other, in the assurance each gives that the other is genuine, but also in their joint illustration of the life and character of Dante. As Giotto painted him, he is the lover of Beatrice, the gay companion of princes,28 the friend of poets, and himself already the most famous writer of love verses in Italy. There is an almost feminine softness in the lines of the face, with a sweet and serious tenderness well befitting the lover, and the author of the sonnets and canzoni which were in a few years to be gathered into the incomparable record of his New Life. It is the face of Dante in the May-time of youthful hope, in that serene season of promise and of joy, which was so soon to reach its foreordained close in the death of her who had made life new and beautiful for him, and to the love and honour of whom he dedicated his soul and gave all his future years. It is the same face with that of the mask; but the one is the face of a youth, ‘with all triumphant splendour on his brow,’ the other of a man, burdened with ‘the dust and injury of age’. The forms and features are alike, but as to the later face,
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