‘Illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy’ Through the Eyes of Final Year Italian Students

Introduction

By Dr Rebecca Bowen (Retained Lecturer in Italian, Pembroke College)

Dante bust and exhibition poster
Illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy. Exhibition view, Voltaire Room, Taylor Institution Library (October – December 2021)

2021 marked the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, Florentine poet, author of the Divine Comedy, and an icon of medieval European literature. The many celebrations held in his honour ranged from exhibitions, rare book displays and academic conferences to live readings of the poem and even Dante-themed ice-creams. This cultural eclecticism attests to the enduring impact of Dante’s works as well as the celebrity of his image, an image able to be absorbed into gastronomic promotions as much as lauded for its literary might. The distorting effects of fame were a preoccupation of Dante who, at the start of his philosophical treatise the Convivio, complains: ‘I have appeared before the eyes of many who, perhaps because of some report (fama), had imagined me in another light […since] the image generated by fame alone is always greater, whatever it may be, than the imagined thing in its true state’ (Convivio. I.iii.11).

Uncovering the ‘true state’ of Dante and his works is a primary aim of Dante Studies, an area of research that has thrived at Oxford since the late 19th century. The University’s museums and libraries have always played a crucial role in this path of discovery, preserving rich records of the poet’s reception and the ongoing vitality of his readerly appeal. The recent exhibition of items from the Sackler and Taylor Institution libraries, ‘Illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy’, was exemplary in this respect. Curated by Professor Gervase Rosser and Clare Hills-Nova with items from Bodleian Libraries collections (principally, Sackler Library and Taylor Institution Library), the display reflected the depth and eclecticism of the visual tradition held by the University, from the intricately illuminated pages of fourteenth-century manuscripts to the neo-expressionist lithographs produced by contemporary artist Mimmo Paladino of the recent centenary year.

Presided over by the Taylorian’s august bust of Dante, whose personal iconography is a topic of myth and debate, the exhibition showcased an array of colourful interpretations of the Comedy. What the poet himself might have made of this visual afterlife becomes an almost unavoidable area of speculation. In an apocryphal tale from the 1390s, the Florentine writer Franco Sacchetti imagines Dante vociferously defending his poem against misquotation by a blacksmith, exclaiming ‘I have no other craft, and you’re ruining it’ (Trecentonovelle, 114). As far as craft goes, the Comedy is very much a literary artefact, addressing its reader no less than fifteen times and frequently emphasising the ineffability of its own descriptions. What is a reader of Dante’s poem to make of visual renditions of his text?

Final year Italian Literature and Languages students from Pembroke, Merton and Wadham colleges turned their attention to this question, using their knowledge of Dante’s poem to examine the rich visual traditions on display in the Taylorian exhibition. Offering insights into the material history and visual details of some of the objects on display, Izzy, Joshua, Anna, Matt and Olivia explore the role of these illustrations as creative records of the poem’s reception, and offer reflections on why they are interested in reading Dante today.

Dante Exhibition Display Case
19th and 20th century illustrations showing works by John Flaxman (lower left), Giovanni Stradano (upper right), and Federico Zuccari (upper left)

Isobel Sanders (Merton College)

Milton Klonsky. Blake’s Dante: The Complete Illustrations to the Divine Comedy (New York: Harmony, 1980).

Klomsky presents Blake’s evocative set of drawings and engravings for Dante’s Comedy, commissioned by John Linnell who sought to provide inspiration for Blake’s creativity alongside some much-needed money towards the end of his life. Few are complete yet this doesn’t make the rest any less engaging. Rather, we are granted insight into Blake’s artistic process, imagining for ourselves what a ‘completed, coloured-in’ version might look like. The works hug the text closely, although Blake didn’t always agree with Dante’s politics, revealed through damning remarks to friends. Small deviations appear in his watercolours, too. The Angel at Purgatory’s entrance seems bored or miserable, his eyelids half-shut; in Blake’s representation of Inferno 14, fire burns upwards rather than falling downwards. Could this be an act of defiance against Dante’s choice of infernal punishment known as the contrapasso, whereby sinners experienced a form of retribution directly related to their sin, often in inverse form? Politics, theology, ideas about fortune and sexuality all add nuance to Blake’s paintings. For, after all, going from one art form to another can never enact an exact ‘translation’. Blake’s illustrations, while rooted in the Romantic era, conjure up the Renaissance – the faces have a touch of Botticelli, or perhaps da Vinci, about them. Imaginative, unsettling and profoundly beautiful, Blake’s drawings establish a dialogue not only with Dante but also with other illustrators, over borders and across centuries. A perusal of Klomsky’s book reveals just how re-presenting the work of another is itself an exegesis – an act of personal interpretation and subsequent production.

Joshua Lavorini (Pembroke College)

Dante Alighieri. Opere di Dante Alighieri: Dedicata alla sagra imperial maesta di Elisabetta Petrowna, imperatrice di tutte le Russie ec. ec. ec. dal conte Don Cristoforo Zapata de Cisneros. Illustrated by Francesco Fontebasso, Gaetano Zompini & others 1757)

This image shows Dante presenting his work to the doge of Venice. The regal stature of the doge may call to mind the exile Dante suffered during the last twenty years of his life, since he learned ‘the bitterness of foreign bread’ (‘come sa di sale / lo pane altrui,’ Par. XVII.58–59) and was always both privileged and humbled by the patronage of other courts. The position of the crown above the doge’s head may be significant: in Paradiso, Dante fantasises that one day ‘I will return a poet, and at the font where I was baptised I will take the crown’ (‘ritorneró poeta, e in sul fonte / del mio battesmo prenderó ‘l cappello,’ Par. XXV.8–9) but in this image, it is the doge, to whom the poet comes in humility, that wears the crown. The faces in the crowd also provoke some thought – why do those to the right seem to be looking upwards towards the sky? What are those on the left looking at? Only the doge seems to be looking directly at the Tuscan poet. The dedication of this edition to Elizabeth Petrovna, Empress of Russia from 1741 until her death in 1762, attests to the fact that that Dante’s presence in Russia grew in the eighteenth century. Boris Antonov tells us that Petrovna encouraged Ivan Shuvalov’s foundation of the Imperial Academy of Arts and financed the grandiose Baroque projects of her favourite architect, Bartolomeo Rastrelli, particularly in the Peterhof Palace. She was clearly very interested in the arts (she spoke French, Italian and German as well as Russian), so it should come as no surprise that she should be fond of Dante. Dante’s impact on Russian culture continued long after her death, leaving a mark on the nation’s poetic symbolism. One Russian writer who was deeply interested in Italy and, by extension, Dante, is Nikolai Gogol. His book Dead Souls, described by him as a poem (despite being written in prose form), was intended to be the first part, i.e., Inferno, (set in contemporary Russia) of his own Divine Comedy. Gogol died before finishing the trilogy, and in a Virgilian act of insanity, burned the second part of Dead Souls. As well as his imitation of classical precedents (he wanted to imitate the Odyssey and Homeric epics), Gogol shares with Dante the use of almost uncomfortable humour and criticism of corruption. Another Russian whose work includes reference to Dante is Tchaikovsky. His orchestral fantasia Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32 (1876) was inspired by an episode in Canto V of the Inferno. In his correspondence, Tchaikovsky frequently quoted lines from Inferno V ‘there is no greater sorrow than to recall moments of happiness in misery’ (‘Nessun maggior dolore / che ricordarsi del tempo felice / ne la miseria,’ Inf. V.121–23), drawing on the enduring pathos of Dante’s infernal lovers.

Dante Exhibition Display Case
Top Left: Landino’s and Vellutello’s combined commentary. Lower Right: Edition dedicated to Elisabetta Petrowna

Anna Zakonyi (Pembroke College)

Dante Alighieri, Cristoforo Landino, Alessandro Vellutello, La Comedia di Dante con l’espositione di Christoforo Landino, et di Alessandro Vellutello (Venice: Giovambattista Marchio Sessa et fratelli, 1564).

Landino and Vellutello’s combined commentary on Dante’s Divina Commedia was originally published in 1564 by the Venetian typographer Sessa, under the editorial supervision of Francesco Sansovino. Consisting of 28 introductory leaves and 392 leaves of commentary, this volume returns to the folio format of medieval tradition, incorporating woodcut illustrations from Marcolini’s Commedia (1544) and the two commentaries with citations of Dante’s poem. The illustrations, in contrast to previous iconographic tradition, act as a continuation of the commentaries, focusing particularly on the topography of Dante’s Afterlife. The combination of Landino and Vellutello’s commentaries on the Commedia (originally published in 1481 and 1544 respectively) is also novel, as it integrates two different approaches: Landino prioritises allegory whilst Vellutello focuses on meaning. Such innovation enjoyed public acclaim, and Sessa re-published the volume in 1578 and 1596 with minimal corrections. Of particular interest is the great authority given to Landino and Vellutello over Dante’s poem. Note, for example, how snippets of the Commedia are explained both by the ‘Argomento’ canto summary under the illustrations and by the double commentary which engulfs the terzine; this allows the commentators to guide the reader’s interpretation, reflecting medieval tradition whereby commentators largely assumed superiority over their subject texts. Considering Dante’s modern dominance within the Italian literary canon, such authority afforded to Landino and Vellutello intrigued me, with this hierarchical organisation – whereby the two commentators are, arguably, superior to the poet – what first drew me to the work. The combination of two commentaries, illustrations, and an extended introduction including a background on Dante’s Florence and his vocabulary, would have made this text an excellent guide to reading and understanding the poem. As a student of Italian myself, this insight into how Renaissance readers might have approached their study of Dante was what interested me most about the work.

Matthew Webb (Wadham College)

Lippmann, Friedrich. Zeichnungen von Sandro Botticelli zu Dante’s Goettlicher Komoedie: Nach den Originalen im K. Kupferstichkabinet zu Berlin (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1887).

This facsimile of Botticelli’s original drawing from c. 1481–88 depicts the Terrace of Pride in canto X of Purgatorio. Botticelli’s drawings distinguished themselves from other fourteenth-century representations of Dante’s text in their presentation of a continuous narrative. Instead of focusing on a single incident in the canto, we are taken, like Dante, through the Terrace of Pride by Virgil, whose guiding arm indicates the chronology of the scene. First, we see Dante and Virgil emerging from a crevice in the bottom left. Then, having ascended onto the terrace itself, we see four separate scenes that move in a rightward direction. The first three of these, depicting Dante and Virgil gazing at marble engravings of biblical and pagan stories exemplifying humility, layer narratives within the main narrative of Dante and Virgil’s journey, mirroring the effect Dante creates in his text through ekphrastic descriptions of the engravings. In this way, Botticelli’s drawing captures the depth and complexity of Dante’s narrative, instead of presenting one static event. I find the astonishing level of detail intriguing, particularly the representation of marble engraving in the image, a virtuosic display of Botticelli’s own skill as a painter (and maybe also a sign of pride). The original was part of a wider collection of illustrations that were commissioned by the artist’s patron, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, which, when brought to sale in the late 19th century, were purchased by Friedrich Lippmann and placed in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin. This remarkably detailed set of facsimiles dates from around the time of the sale, an artefact in its own right.

Dante Exhibition Display Case
Left: MS. 8o It.3 (1395 ). Right: Dante’s ‘Terrace of Pride’ (Purgatorio X), as illustrated by Botticelli

Olivia Ganderton (Pembroke College)

Lippmann, Friedrich. Zeichnungen von Sandro Botticelli zu Dante’s Goettlicher Komoedie: Nach den Originalen im K. Kupferstichkabinet zu Berlin (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1887).

Dante’s Purgatory I, as illustrated by Bottiicelli

Botticelli’s late fifteenth-century drawing for Purgatorio I, often thought to have been commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, piqued my interest specifically due to the challenge posed to the artist to portray both this particular canto and introduce the viewer to a whole new cantica, that of Purgatory. The drawing shows Dante and Virgil entering the realm of Purgatory, where they meet its guardian, Cato (the figure furthest right), who then advises Virgil to wash Dante clean of the filth from his journey through Hell. Moving right to left, the following elements of the canto are illustrated: Cato halts the poets and asks them their business; Virgil plucks grass to cleanse Dante; Virgil wraps reeds around Dante’s waist; a ship-full of new souls arrives on the shores of Purgatory. These events occur one after the other, yet Botticelli decides to include each moment simultaneously in his drawing, giving a sense of unity and circularity to this stage of the afterlife, whilst choosing to give each stage equal status. This continuity is further emphasised by his inclusion of the ship-full of souls furthest to the right that will be described in the second canto of Purgatory, offering a conceptual connection between the composition of the image and movement of the narrative in the text. 

 

 

 

Further Reading:

Antonov, Boris (2006). Russian Tsars. Saint Petersburg: Ivan Fiorodov Art Publishers.

Gombrich, E. H. (1979), ‘Giotto’s Portrait of Dante?’, The Burlington Magazine, 121.917: 471–483.

Parker, Deborah (2013), ‘Illuminating Botticelli’s Chart of Hell’, MLN, 128.1.

Ricci, Lucia Battaglia (2009), ‘Ai Margini del Testo: Considerazioni sulla Tradizione del “Dante illustrato”’, Italianistica, 38.2: 39–58.

Rosser, Geravse (2005), ‘Turning Tale into Vision: Time and the Image in the “Divina Commedia”’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 48: 106–122.

Emerging from Pandemic Purgatory: Illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy

Taylor Institution Library, View from St Giles’
Above: Taylor Institution Library, View from St Giles’

This post originally appeared on the Oxford Libraries Graduate Trainee Blog and is republished with permission of the author.

*****

Sadly, for many of us, the last eighteen months have seen the cancellation, curtailment and delay of countless celebrations, including birthdays, holidays, anniversaries and achievements. At the very least, we’ve been forced to relocate those festivities online and connect with family and friends via laptops and phone screens in a kind of digital limbo.

Re-emerging into the real world from this pandemic-induced Purgatory, I recently returned to Oxford, a city that I’d previously called home for many years. My arrival overlapped with many of the restrictions of the last year and a half being (cautiously) rolled back. As the new Graduate Trainee at the Taylor Institution Library (known colloquially as the ‘Taylorian’), my first week saw the steady disappearance of one-way systems, sign-in slots and restricted access for readers to many of the library’s more intimate spaces.

Taylor Institution Library, Aerial View
Above: Taylor Institution Library, Aerial View (2008)

Like the Bodleian Libraries more broadly, many institutions and historical personages have also found their usual cycles of anniversaries and commemorations disrupted by lockdown measures and restrictions on large gatherings. Excitingly, the prospect of more freedom for staff and readers at the University of Oxford has coincided with another cause for celebration: the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the great Italian poet and philosopher. As a result, the Taylor Institution Library, Weston Library and the Ashmolean Museum have prepared three exhibitions of works from among the libraries’ and museum’s many and varied holdings, which provide visions of, and insights into, the author’s most famous work, the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia). Works from the Taylorian’s collections are included in the Ashmolean and Weston displays. The Taylorian exhibition, ‘Illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy’, meanwhile, also draws upon the collections of the Sackler Library, Oxford’s principal research location for the study of visual culture. Alongside my regular duties at the library (with which I’m slowly familiarising myself), I’ve been fortunate enough to join Clare Hills-Nova (Librarian in Charge, Sackler Library, and Subject Librarian for Italian Literature and Language at the Taylorian) and Professor Gervase Rosser, curatorial lead on all three Oxford Dante exhibitions, in their preparations for the display of prints, manuscripts and illustrated books spanning the seven hundred years since Dante’s passing.

Taylor Institution Library, University of Oxford
Above: Taylor Institution Library, University of Oxford (Architect C. R. Cockerell, 1841-45)

The photos provided here offer a window on the range of texts and images that were chosen for the Taylorian exhibition and the process that went into preparing them for public display. I came into that process after Clare and Gervase had agreed on the works to be included and their gathering from the Taylorian’s rare books and manuscript holdings and other library locations was complete. The exhibition handlist includes an introduction to the works on display as well as a list of works they considered for inclusion.

Together, Clare and I spent an afternoon preparing the exhibition space – among the already impressive holdings of the library’s Voltaire Room.

Taylor Institution Library, Voltaire Room
Above: Taylor Institution Library, Voltaire Room (ca. 2010)

A provisional placement of the exhibits according to the chronological layout agreed by Clare and Gervase gave us a sense of how the various prints, manuscripts and books would fit within the display cases.

Working with a number of old and rare editions – including some of the oldest books that I’ve had the opportunity to see first-hand during my time in Oxford – required careful handling and the use of foam rests and ‘snakes’ (long, cotton-wrapped metal ‘beads’ designed to hold open books). Clare has a background in conservation, so provided an experienced eye and guiding hand throughout the process.

Open exhibition display case pictured with box of foam rests
Above: Preparing the display cases

After this initial test-run of the display cases, I was tasked with assisting in the preparation of a bibliography to provide visitors to the exhibition with a comprehensive list of texts on display, and those consulted during the curation process. This not only gave me an excellent opportunity to re-familiarise myself with the Bodleian Libraries’ SOLO (‘Search Oxford Libraries Online’) catalogue, but required some further detective work to collect the full details of some of the more obscure texts included in the exhibition.

Although I’m familiar with this kind of work from my time researching and writing Russian history, and searching for texts catalogued in various forms of transliterated Cyrillic, the preparations for this exhibition included consideration of works in Italian, French and German too. Exploiting the automatic citation tool provided on the SOLO also exposed the potential drawback of relying on technology alone. Each of these languages inevitably has its own bibliographic conventions for the formatting of references (authors, titles, publishing info, etc.), not all of which are captured by auto-generation of citations. Obviously, I still have plenty to learn on that front being based in one of Oxford’s key research centres for modern languages and linguistics!

Open display case with selection of illustrated books
Above: Testing the layout of the exhibits within the display case

The whole process also brought home how inconsistent and incomplete some of the catalogue descriptions are within the Bodleian Libraries’ older collections and more unique items. This is quite the mountain to climb for those librarians faced with such a vast (and ever expanding) number of books, journals, periodicals and other ephemera in every language under the sun.

One particular exhibit of note is shown below:

Title page of Italian edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy dedicated to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna of Russia
Above: A copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy dedicated to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna of Russia (daughter of Peter the Great). Published in Venice, Italy in 1757

It was wonderful to find such a striking connection between the history of Imperial Russia and Dante’s life and work!

The second set of photos below provides a view of the final layout for each display case. Supporting information to be included alongside the works was still being prepared at the time of taking, but a sense of the diversity of images and lasting influence of Dante’s work on artists, writers, print-makers and publishers across the world is evident already.

 

Students, faculty and staff from across the University are welcome to visit the Taylorian’s exhibition during library opening hours, from the beginning of Michaelmas term through December 2021. The parallel exhibitions marking Dante’s centenary celebrations are on display for a similar period: Ashmolean Museum (17 September 2021 – 9 January 2022) and Weston Library (8 September 2021 – 14 November 2021), which will give everyone interested in the life, history and influence of Dante the opportunity to explore the wider collections of the University.

Further Oxford Dante events, ranging from concerts to film screenings, to lectures and (of course!) at least one book launch celebrating the 700th anniversary are planned for autumn 2021.

Having now had an insight into the complexities involved in preparing, curating and displaying materials from our impressive Dante collections, the chance to come face-to-face with these exhibits sounds like Paradiso itself!

If you want to know more about Dante-related holdings in Oxford, please check out the Taylorian’s earlier blog posts in this regard (linked below):

Listening to Dante: An Audio-visual Afterlife

The Image of Dante, the Divine Comedy and the Visual Arts, Part I

The Image of Dante, the Divine Comedy and the Visual Arts: Part II

Malcolm L. G. Spencer

Graduate Trainee, Taylor Institution Library