‘That time of year thou mayst in it behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.’
The face of the youth is grave, as with the shadow of distant sorrow; the face of the man is solemn, as of one who had gone
‘Per tutti i cerchi del dolente regno’.29
The one is the young poet of Florence, the other the supreme poet of the world—
‘Che al divino dall’ umano,
All’ eterno dal tempo era venuto’.”30
BRONZE BUST OF DANTE AT NAPLES
From the death-mask described above appears to have been modelled the famous bronze bust of Dante, now in the National Museum at Naples.31
Another contemporary artist, besides Giotto, is known to have painted Dante’s portrait, but this unfortunately has perished. In his Life of Dante, Leonardo Bruni says: “His exact likeness, most excellently drawn from the life, by an accomplished painter of those times, is to be seen in the Church of Santa Croce, about half way up the church on the left side as you go towards the high altar”.32 The painter of this portrait was Taddeo Gaddi,33 as we learn from Vasari, who in his Life of Taddeo Gaddi, speaking of Santa Croce, says: “Below the partition which divides the church, on the left, above the crucifix of Donatello, Taddeo painted in fresco a miracle of St. Francis, how, appearing in the air, he restored to life a child who had been killed by falling from a loggia. In this fresco Taddeo introduced the portraits of his master Giotto, of the poet Dante, and of Guido Cavalcanti, or, as some assert, of himself.” 34 This fresco was destroyed by Vasari himself when, in 1566, by order of Cosimo I, he removed the partition on which it was painted.35
So-called portraits of Dante in various frescoes and illuminated manuscripts are numerous. The best known of the latter is the one prefixed to Codex 1040 in the Riccardi Library in Florence, which was pronounced by the commission appointed to examine into the question in 1864 to be the most authentic portrait of Dante in existence.36 This opinion, however, which was disputed at the time, has not by any means met with general acceptance.37
A very interesting representation of Dante, with his book (the Divina Commedia) in his hand, and in the background a view of Florence on one side, and of the three kingdoms of the other world on the other, is placed over the north door in the Cathedral of Florence. This picture was painted in 1466, about 150 years after Dante’s death, by Domenico di Michelino, a pupil of Fra Angelico; and though it cannot in any sense claim to be a portrait of Dante it has great value as a characteristic representation of the poet, in the Florentine costume of the day, and crowned with the poet’s crown of laurel.38
* * *
1 Lord Lindsay’s History of Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 174.
2 Dante mentions Giotto in the Commedia: “Cimabue thought to hold the field in painting, and now Giotto has the cry, so that the fame of the other is obscured” (Purg. xi. 94-6).
3 Lord Lindsay says: “There can be little doubt, from the prominent position assigned Dante in this composition, as well as from his personal appearance, that this fresco was painted in, or immediately after, the year 1300, when he was one of the Priors of the Republic, and in the thirty-fifth year of his age”. There is, however, a difficulty in accepting this early date for Giotto’s portrait of Dante, in that in 1332 the Palazzo del Podestà was seriously damaged by fire, and had to be partially rebuilt, as is recorded by Villani: “a dì 28 di Febbraio s’ apprese fuoco nel palagio del comune ove abita la podestà, e arse tutto il tetto del vecchio palazzo e le due parti del nuovo dalle prime volte in su. Per la qual cosa s’ ordinò per lo comune che si rifacesse tutto in volte infino a’ tetti.” (bk. x. ch. 182). It is urged, therefore, that even if the fire did not destroy the fresco, it would almost certainly have left traces of damage. Consequently some recent critics have argued that Giotto must have painted the fresco later than 1331, after the building had been repaired. In this case the portraits of Dante and of those associated with him in the fresco must have been painted from memory. But it is quite possible that the fresco may have been painted in 1300 and that any damage caused by the fire of 1332 may have been repaired either by Giotto himself or by one of his pupils.
4 In the notice of Giotto in his Liber de Civitatis Florentiae Famosis Civibus: “Pinxit speculorum suffragio semetipsum, sibique contemporaneum Dantem, in tabula altaris Capellae Palatii Potestatis”. A still earlier reference, however, occurs (as is supposed) in the following poem of Antonio Pucci, the author of the Centiloquio, who died c. 1390 :—
Questi che veste di color sanguigno,
Posto seguente alle merite sante,
Dipinse Giotto in figura di Dante,
Che di parole fe’ sì bell’ ordigno.
E come par nell’ abito benigno,
Così nel mondo fu con tutte quante
Quelle virtù ch’ onoran chi davante
Le porta con effetto nello scrigno.
Diritto paragon fu di sentenze:
Col braccio manco avvinchia la Scrittura,
Perchè signoreggiò molte scienze.
E ’l suo parlar fu con tanta misura,
Chè ’ncoronò la città di Firenze
Di pregio, ond’ ancor fama le dura.
Perfetto di fattezze è qui dipinto,
Com’ a sua vita fu di carne cinto.
(Rime di Trecentisti Minori, a cura di G. Volpi, 1907, pp. 105-6.)
5 In his Vita Dantis: “Ejus effigies in Basilica Sanctae Crucis, et in Capella Praetoris Urbani utrobique in parietibus extat ea forma, qua revera in vita fuit a Giotto quodam optimo ejus temporis pictore egregie depicta”. The portrait is mentioned also by Landino in the Vita di Dante prefixed to his commentary on the Divina Commedia (1481): “La sua effigie resta ancora di mano di Giotto in Santa Croce, e nella capella del Podestà”.
6 F. J. Bunbury, writing in 1852, says: “The Bargello of Florence, which at present contains the prisons, and some public offices of the Government, was once the Palace of the Podestà, . . . but for centuries the chamber [in which was the portrait of Dante] had been coated with white-wash, divided into two storeys, and partitioned for prisoners’ cells.” The whole Bargello building is now used as a museum.
7 Norton was writing in 1865.
8 Of the Grand Duke.
921 July, 1840.
10“The enthusiasm of the Florentines,” says Lord Lindsay, “on the announcement of the discovery, resembled that of their ancestors when Borgo Allegri received its name from their rejoicings in sympathy with Cimabue. ‘L’ abbiamo il nostro poeta!’ was the universal cry, and for days afterwards the Bargello was thronged with a continuous succession of pilgrim visitors.”
11 This letter was written originally by Kirkup in Italian—it was a (not very accurate) translation which was published in the Spectator. G. B. Cavalcaselle printed a corrected translation in the same paper, on 13 July.
12 In Cavalcaselle’s version: “to the great damage of the expression as well as the character and costume”.
13 Cavalcaselle: “The likeness of the face is changed; and the three colours . . . are no longer there”.
14 The original drawing, made on the inside of the vellum cover of a copy of the 1531 edition of the Convivio, was acquired by Colonel W. J. Gillum, at the sale of Kirkup’s library at Sotheby’s in December, 1871, and was recently (April, 1908) presented by him to the Museo Nazionale (in the Bargello) at Florence. Kirkup gave the following interesting account to a friend (Mrs. Gillum, by whom it was kindly communicated to the writer), in Florence in 1873 of how he managed to get the drawing made. “I went to the Bargello Chapel, along with others of the public, and I had that book (the Convivio) and some colours in my pocket. For a while I managed to draw, holding the book within my wide felt hat, but by and by the man in charge of the room came up to me and said: ‘You know, Signor Barone, the Grand Duke does not allow any copying’. I answered:
‘I am making some notes,’ and went on with the work. After a time the man came again, and said: ‘It is late, Signor Barone, time for me to lock up and go to my dinner. Every one but yourself is gone.’—‘You can go. You may lock me in to finish my notes.’ As soon as I was alone, I wheeled up the stage which had been left by the workmen who removed the plaster, mounted it, and took a tracing on thin paper, so as to obtain the exact outline and precise size. I then replaced the stage, and took up my drawing again quite comfortably. So my ‘notes’ were finished before my gaoler returned from dinner.” [Kirkup’s description of himself as “Barone” in 1840 is an anachronism. He assumed the title (through a misunderstanding) after being created by King Victor Emmanuel, on the restoration of the Italian kingdom, a “Cavaliere di SS. Maurizio e Lazzaro”.]
15 The tracing which Kirkup made at the same time as the drawing was given by him to his friend Gabriele Rossetti, who handed it on to his son, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was sold after the death of the latter in 1882.
16 Interesting details of the discovery of the fresco and of the making of the drawing of the portrait of Dante are given in three letters from Kirkup to Gabriele Rossetti, which are printed in Gabriele Rossetti: A Versified Autobiography, edited by W. M. Rossetti, 1901. (See Appendix C.)
17 As a matter of fact the art of taking casts from the human face was known to the ancients. It was at least 300 years old in the days of Pliny, by whom reference is made to it in his Historia Naturalis: “Hominis imaginem gypso e facie ipsa primus omnium expressit, ceraque in eam formam gypsi infusa emendare instituit Lysistratus Sicyonius”; i.e. Lysistratus of Sicyon (c. 320 B.C.) was the first who took a cast of the human face in plaster, and produced copies from this mould by pouring into it melted wax (xxxv. § 44).
18 An extract from this biography, along with some interesting remarks by Kirkup, is given in a letter from the latter to Charles Lyell from Florence, 27 February, 1842 (printed in The Poems of the Vita Nuova and Convito of Dante, translated by Charles Lyell, 1842, pp. xvii-xix).
19 The mask possessed by Ricci, who made use of it for the purposes of his statue of Dante in Santa Croce in Florence, eventually also passed into the hands of Kirkup, by whom it was presented to the Oxford Dante Society.
20 This last is now in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. (See plate opposite.)
21 This was the opinion also of the eminent surgeon, the late Sir James Paget.
22 Corrado Ricci, on the other hand, who persistently denies the genuineness of the death-mask, does not hesitate to declare that the trace of the sculptor’s tool is everywhere evident! (see L ’ Ultimo Rifugio di Dante, p. 279).
23 Sir James Paget pointed out that this depression of the tip of the nose, which one is accustomed to regard as characteristic of Dante’s face, was just such as would have been produced by the weight of the plaster in taking the cast.
‘L’ alto trionfo del regno verace’.24
24“The high triumph of the true kingdom” (Par. xxx. 98).
25 That Dante had a beard we know from himself (Purg. xxxi. 68).
26A representation of the mask, in two positions, is given on plate opposite p. 88.
27 See plate, opposite p. 128.
28 Compare the reference to Charles Martel of Hungary, Paradiso, viii. 55-7.
29 “Through all the circles of the woeful kingdom” (Purg. vii. 22).
30 “Who was come from the human to the divine, from time to eternity” (Par. xxxi. 37-8).
31 See plate opposite.
32“L’ effige sua propria si vede nella chiesa di Santa Croce, quasi al mezzo chiesa dalla mano sinistra andando verso l’ altare maggiore, e ritratta al naturale ottimamente per dipintore perfetto di quel tempo” (Vita di Dante, ed. Brunone Bianchi, 1883, p. xxii). This portrait cannot have been painted “from the life” in Florence, since Dante left Florence never to return within a year or two of Taddeo Gaddi’s birth, who was little more than twenty when Dante died.
33 c. 1300-1366.
34 “Sotto il tramezzo che divide la chiesa, a man sinistra sopra il Crocifisso di Donato, dipinse a fresco una storia di San Francesco, d’ un miracolo che fece nel risuscitar un putto che era morto cadendo da un verone coll’ apparire in aria. Ed in questa storia ritrasse Giotto suo maestro, Dante poeta e Guido Cavalcanti: altri dicono sè stesso” (Opere di Vasari, ed. Milanesi, 1878, vol. i. pp. 573-4).
35 See Opere di Vasari, ed. cit., vol. i. p. 574 n., vol. vii. p. 711 n.
36 See plate, opposite p. 119.
37 In 1864, in view of the approaching celebration in Florence of the sixth centenary of Dante’s birth, the Minister of Public Instruction commissioned Gaetano Milanesi and Luigi Passerini to report upon the most authentic portrait of the poet, as it was proposed to have a medallion executed in commemoration of the centenary. Milanesi and Passerini communicated the results of their invistigations to the Minister in a letter which was published in the Giornale del Centenario for 20 July, 1864. After stating their doubts with regard to the Bargello portrait, and disposing of the claims of two other portraits contained in MSS. preserved in Florence, they go on to say: “Very precious on the other hand is the portrait prefixed to Codex 1040 in the Riccardi Library, which contains the minor poems of Dante, together with those of Messer Bindi Bonichi, and which appears from the arms and initials to have belonged to Paolo di Jacopo Giannotti, who was born in 1430. This portrait, which is about half the size of life, is in water-colour, and represents the poet with his characteristic features at the age of rather more than forty. It is free from the exaggeration of later artists, who, by giving undue prominence to the nose and under-lip and chin, make Dante’s profile resemble that of a hideous old woman. In our opinion this portrait is to be preferred to any other, especially for the purposes of a medallion.”
Cavalcaselle, among other authorities, declined to accept these conclusions.* Checcacci, on the contrary, who carefully compared the Riccardi portrait with a very exact copy of that in the Bargello, asserted that if the difference of age be taken into consideration, the two resemble each other “like two drops of water”:—“The Bargello portrait lacks the wrinkles of the other, while the colouring is more fresh, and the prominence of the lower lip is less marked, but the nose, which does not change with advancing years, is identical, as are the shape and colour of the eyes, and the shape of the skull, which may be distinguished in both portraits”. He added further that the sculptor Dupré was greatly struck with the Riccardi portrait, which he considered might be the work of Giotto himself, and that he availed himself of it for the medallion which he was commissioned to execute in commemoration of the centenary. (See Giornale del Centenario for 10 Sept., 1864.)
* See Giornale del Centenario for 20 August, 1864.
38 See plate, opposite p. 193. This picture was for a long time attributed to Orcagna, until the discovery of documentary evidence in Florence established the fact that it was the work of Domenico di Michelino (1417-1491) (see Opere di Vasari, ed. Milanesi, 1878, vol. i. p. 607 n., vol. ii. p. 85 n.). The picture attracted the attention of most English travellers in Florence. The first notice of it by an Englishman occurs in the Epitaphia et Inscriptiones Lugubres (published in 1554), of William Barker, the translator of Gelli’s Capricci del Bottaio, who transcribed the Latin inscription (‘Qui caelum cecinit, mediumque imumque tribunal,’ etc.), on the frame, which was Englished 200 years later (in 1730) by Edward Wright, another English traveller, as follows:—
“Behold the poet, who in lofty verse
Heav’n, hell, and purgatory did rehearse;
The learned Dante! whose capacious soul
Survey’d the universe, and knew the whole.
To his own Florence he a father prov’d,
Honour’d for counsel, for religion lov’d.
Death will not hurt so great a bard as he,
Who lives in virtue, verse, and effigy.”
(See Dante in English Literature, vol. i. pp. 41, 216, and index). Another picture of Dante worthy of ment
ion here is the painting by Andrea del Castagno (c. 1390-1457) of the poet in a red robe, and red hood bordered with fur, with his book in his right hand, which (now in the Museo Nazionale at Florence) originally formed one of a series of portraits (including Farinata degli Uberti, Petrarch, and Boccaccio) executed for the Villa di Legnaia dei Pandolfini (see Opere di Vasari, ed. cit., vol. ii. p. 670 n.; see also plate, opposite p. 231.
CHAPTER III
Anecdotes of Dante—Dante and Can Grande della Scala—Belacqua and Dante—Sacchetti’s stories—Dante and the blacksmith—Dante and the donkey-driver—Dante’s creed—Dante and King Robert of Naples—Dante’s reply to the bore—Dante and the Doge of Venice—Dante a kleptomaniac—Dante and Cecco d’ Ascoli.
MANY anecdotes and traditions concerning Dante have been preserved by various Italian writers, the majority of which are undoubtedly apocryphal. Some of them, however, are worth recording, as representing the popular conception of what Dante was like in ordinary life.
One of the earliest is that told by Petrarch1 of Dante at the court of Can Grande della Scala at Verona, after he had been exiled from Florence:—
“Dante Alighieri, erewhile my fellow-citizen, was a man greatly accomplished in the vulgar tongue; but on account of his pride he was somewhat more free in his manners and speech than was acceptable to the sensitive eyes and ears of the noble princes of our country. Thus, when he was exiled from his native city, and was a guest at the court of Can Grande, at that time the refuge and resort of all who were in misfortune, he was at first held in high honour; but afterwards by degrees he began to lose favour, and day by day became less pleasing to his host. Among the guests at the same time were, according to the custom of those days, mimics and buffoons of every description, one of whom, an impudent rascal, by means of his coarse remarks and broad jests made himself a universal favourite and a person of considerable influence. Can Grande, suspecting that this was a cause of vexation to Dante, sent for the buffoon, and, after lavishing praise upon him, turned to Dante and said: ‘I wonder how it is that this man, fool though he be, understands how to please us all, and is petted by every one; while you, for all your reputed wisdom, can do nothing of the kind!’ Dante replied: ‘You would hardly wonder at that, if you remembered that like manners and like minds are the real causes of friendship’.”2
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