Category: Art

Dante’™s Florence Week 5 Part Two

Published on by Margaret
Dante’™s Exile from Florence

Dante entered politics in 1295 and in 1300 he became a Prior, one of the Governors of the City giving him great prestige. It was a dangerous time with fighting between the factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines. The Guelfs supported the Pope, opposing the Ghibellines who supported the Holy Roman Emperor. The political situation was very complicated and became more so when the Guelfs split into two opposing factions, known as the Whites and the Blacks. The Whites, including Dante, opposed the Pope wanting more control of their own affairs ‘“ Dante thought the Pope, Boniface VIII was corrupt and was too involved with temporal affairs. He wanted more independence for Florence and a split between the Church and the State. Dante attacked the Pope and the Church in The Divine Comedy, for example in Canto 19 Inferno he describes the punishment for simony, the crime of buying a position within the church and denounces Boniface as a simonist.

In 1302 Dante was accused of fraud and as he refused to pay the fine he was sentenced to death by burning and was banished from Florence. He was offered an amnesty in 1315, but the conditions were too humiliating for him to accept and he never returned to Florence. He refers to his exile in The Divine Comedy through a conversation in Canto 17 Paradiso XVII with his great-great grandfather Cacciaguida, with Cacciaguida forecasting Dante’s exile from Florence:

‘œYou will leave everything you love most dearly;
This is the arrow which is
loosed first
From the bow of exile.

You will learn how salt is the
taste
Of other people’™s bread, how hard the way
Going up and down other
people’™s stairs.’

Dante spent 19 years in exile. He championed writing in the vernacular and in 1304 he published De Vulgari Eloquentia(On Eloquence in the vernacular). He started to write The Divine Comedy in 1306/7 and finished it just before his death in 1321 in Ravenna. During, 1315 ‘“ 1316 whilst he was the guest of Can Grande della Scala in Verona he wrote part of Purgatorio. Below is Maria Spartali Stillman’s painting of Dante in Verona, showing Dante surrounded by a group of admiring women.

In 1317 he was offered a home by Guido Novello da Polenta in Ravenna, where he completed Purgatorio and began Paradiso. Can Grande was a patron of the arts and sheltered exiles, giving Dante his own apartments and treating him very well. Dante dedicated Paradiso to Can Grande in gratitude.

Dante died on 14 September 1321and was buried in the Church of San Francesco in Ravenna, where there is a shrine containing his sarcophagus and a votive lamp.

Despite requests from Florence to return his body to the city, Dante’™s tomb in the church of Santa Croce is empty.

Dante’s The Divine Comedy

Published on by Margaret2 Comments
Dante finished writing The Divine Comedy in 1321 shortly before his death. The subject of the final talk in my course on Dante’s Florence was The Divine Comedy, its sources, structure, an introduction to some of its characters, concluding with Dante’s legacy in art.

I don’t think that I’ve ever had such a long introduction to a literary work and I’m eager now to actually read The Divine Comedy. My copy is the Oxford World’s Classics publication. It is 741 pages long, including several introductory essays with plans and maps, and copious notes. I also have the much shorter The Descent Into Hell translated by Dorothy L Sayers. This is only 130 pages and contains extracts from the Inferno (the first part of The Divine Comedy).

Dante’s first title for this was The Vision. He wrote it in Italian, not Latin, so that it was accessible for everyone. It was recited and is basically a sermon, a sacred poem. He changed the title to comedy, which in the ancient tradition was a story, beginning as tragedy and moving to a happy ending. Boccaccio added Divine to the title in the 14th century. It’s an epic, allegorical poem and also an historical chronicle of Dante’s time packed with information on topics such as politics, theology, geography, the arts, and love.

It depicts three regions of the dead – Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise – a journey through the spiritual realms. There are 100 cantos, written in third rhyme – terza rima, invented by Dante, ie the first and third lines rhyme, with the second line indicating the next rhyme. This is an aid to memory and also helps to move the narrative forward. It’s packed with imagery, with multiple meanings and although it includes contemporary characters it’s amazingly modern. Florence is depicted as hell, with the Pope, Boniface VIII and clerics condemned because of the corrupt state of the church, although Dante describes meeting Christian theological thinkers in Paradise.

Dante used many sources, including the Bible, Greek mythology, Roman history, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Livy, legends, miracle and medieval morality plays and his own stories. The poem begins with an exciting episode at the gates to the underworld in a dark, confusing wood, symbolising doubt, sin and the sterility of the soul. Dante, the narrator, has lost the path and is guided by Virgil through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise, where he meets his beloved Beatrice, who guides him through Heaven. Paradiso is the place of perfect harmony ordained by God. Dante followed the Ptolemaic system of the Cosmos in which Earth is the centre of the universe. He placed Hell at the centre of the Earth, underneath Jerusalem, reached through nine different circles, containing sinners suffering terrible punishments and torture. Purgatory was somewhere in the southern hemisphere, ascending up to Paradise located in Heaven above the Earth.

There are about 600 characters in the whole poem, 250 from the classical era, 80 from the Bible and 250 from Dante’s own time. Dante admired Virgil, his guide through Hell and Purgatory. He describes him as that fount of splendour, symbolising human reason and wisdom. Amongst the many characters are Brunetto Latini, Dante’s mentor who took an active role in politics and the art of oratory, found in Hell because of the sin of sodomy, which was considered as violence against nature; and Farinata degli Uberti, the leader of the Ghybelline party, also found in Hell as punishment for heresy because he was an Epicurean believing that the soul died with the body. He rises from the burning tomb of heretics to speak to Dante. The first mention of Florence is from Ciacco, guilty of the sin of gluttony, when he refers the bloodshed between the citizens of ‘the divided city‘.

Other people mentioned are members of the ancient Donati family (Dante’s wife was Gemma Donati) – Dante’s friend Foresi Donati, Corso Donati, a thief being changed into a serpent and Piccarda Donati his sister,  ‘pearl on a white forehead’, who had belonged to the Order of Poor Clares and was forced to marry to forge a political alliance; the violent tempered Agenti who opposed Dante’s recall from exile; Gianni Schicchi (the source of Puccini’s opera – including the beautiful aria O mio babbino caro); and Count Ugolino, the tyrant who had switched allegiance and was left to starve in Pisa’s Tower of Famine – he was said to have eaten his sons and grandsons and for punishment in Hell was forced to chew on the head of Archbishop Ruggieri.

The Divine Comedy has been read and copied ever since with commentaries coming very quickly after Dante’s death. The first biography of Dante was written in about 1351 by Giovanni Boccaccio, based on oral history from Dante’s contemporaries. The poem was seen as a difficult, obscure work, gothic and heavy going in 14th century England, but Chaucer mentioned it in the Monk’s Tale in his Canterbury Tales. English translations were made from 1802 onwards by Henry Boyd and Henry Cary (promoted by Coleridge). It influenced amongst others John Milton, Shelley and Byron, Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

There are many examples of Dante’s legacy in art – here are just a few:

Giotto’s Last Judgment, in the Arena Chapel in Padua.
Frescos in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella showing the tiered compartments of Hell and Cerberus the monster with three throats, wings and the body of a beast guarding Hell and the Elect – Saints and Cardinals rising up from their tombs.
The Last Judgment of Fra Angelico.


The painting of the Madonna in Majesty by the Siennese painter Martini.
Botticelli’s scenes of Inferno commissioned to illustrate The Divine Comedy by the Medicis – 92 survive and are in the Vatican Library.

Drawn in pen and ink he intended to colour them all. The one shown below is of the City of Dis, the lower part of Hell, with winged monsters, and the Circle of Deceivers. Dante is shown in red and Virgil in blue.


Frescoes of the Last Judgment in Orvietto Cathedral in 1500 reflecting the doom and gloom of the times fearing the end of the world with images of the damned, a mass of contorted bodies, by Signorelli, a master of human anatomy – the Resurrection of the flesh showing skeletons and bodies emerging from their tombs.
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.
Gustave Dore’s illustrations of The Divine Comedy.


William Blake’s watercolour paintings of Inferno


Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s translation of La Vita Nuova in 1848.
Christina Rossetti’s studies of Dante – she saw him as a figure of romance.
Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix 1863 – his portrait of Lizzie Siddell in a trance-like state. The white poppy because she was thought to have been poisoned with opium and the sundial pointing to 9 relating to the meeting of Dante and Beatrice when he was 9 years old. This is one of my favourite paintings.


Rodin’s Gates of Hell and The Thinker, also The Kiss, depicting Francesca de Rimini whom Dante meets in Canto 5 of the Inferno. Francesca had fallen in love with Paulo, her husband’s younger brother. The legend goes that they were killed by Giovanni, her husband.

There are many, many more – see this Wikipedia link.

Dante’s Florence Week 5 Part One

Published on by Margaret
By the end of the 13th century Florence was a bustling and prosperous city. We looked at a painting by Lord Leighton – Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna is carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence, 1853-1855. The Victorians had an intense interest in Dante. In this painting, which was bought by Queen Victoria, Cimabue’™s painting of the Madonna, a hugh altarpiece is carried through the streets of Florence. Giotto, a pupil of Cimabue, is shown in white, with Dante on the far right.

In week 4 we had looked at the new city walls designed by Arnolfo Di Cambio. Di Cambio’™s crowning achievement was, however, his design for a new cathedral. The old cathedral was considered to be too small and too coarse. As the population of the city increased the new cathedral was designed with a hugh interior space to accommodate the whole population. Dedicated to Santa Maria del Fiore, it was started in 1296 and took many years to complete. Old buildings were knocked down to make way for it, including the hospital and the old cathedral, dedicated to Santa Reparata.

It seems that Di Cambio originally planned a wooden dome, but this was replaced by Brunelleschiժs dome which was completed in 1436. We looked at a copy of his outline plan for the cathedral (the original of the drawing is in the Museo dellժOpera del Duomo) and also at Poccettiժs drawing (c. 1587) of the fa̤ade of the Duomo, which shows the fa̤ade as it was before it was covered over in the 19th century by the current fa̤ade. This shows the mosaics, reliefs and statues designed by Di Cambio.

The illustration (copied from the course handout) is not very clear but does give an impression of what the façade was like. Only a few of the original sculptures have survived, including the ‘˜Madonna of the Glass Eyes’™, the Annunciation to the Shepherds and a statue of Pope Boniface VIII, the luxury loving, warrior pope whom Dante opposed. these are now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.

I particularly like the story of Dante’™s stone ‘“ the Sasso di Dante – where Dante is supposed to have sat and watched the cathedral being built. A plaque embedded in the wall of one of the houses opposite the cathedral was placed in memory of his special seat.

This was one of the places of pilgrimage during the 19th century for the nobility on the Grand Tour of Europe.

Under the shadow of a stately Pile,
The dome of Florence, pensive and alone,
Nor giving heed to aught that passed the while,
I stood, and gazed upon
a marble stone,
The laurelled Dante’s favourite seat. ‘¦

From Wordsworth, Memorials of a tour in Italy, 1837 At Florence

Di Cambio also began the design of the Palazzo Vecchio, a very important building that housed the Priors, the governors of the city and is now the town hall and a museum. The crenulated Arnolfo Tower is characteristic of a fortified building. Uberti family buildings were demolished to make way for the Palazzo.

Dante’s Exile in Week 5 Part Two

Dante’s Florence Week 4

Published on by Margaret

Banking

Florence was a city of innovations. The Florin was first minted in 1252 and became a kind of medieval Euro. It was stamped with the symbols of the city ‘“ the lily, the secular symbol on one side with St John, the patron saint on the other side. Bills of Credit and the double entry system of book keeping were invented in Florence. The Bardi and Peruzzi families were the main banking families with agents right across Europe. Their money came from the textile industry ‘“ wool from as far away as the Cotswolds in England was imported and processed by the thousands of people employed by the Humiliati Order of monks. The Wool Guild was in the heart of the city with barn sheds for drying the wool, with loggia below so that the air could circulate. There was even a fortified wool factory further up the Arno.

The Guilds ‘“ Patrons of Art

The Bankers Guild was established in 1206, St Matthew being the Patron Saint of Bankers. Membership of a guild was a necessary qualification to take part in the government of the city and Dante was enrolled in the Guild of Apothecaries, which included artists, doctors, musicians and writers. He entered politics in 1295 and became the Superintendant of Roads and Planning. The Bargello housed the civic government and the head of police. It was built in 1255 before Dante was born, was the place of execution and is now the National Museum.

References in The Divine Comedy to finance and commerce

Dante’™s audience had a mercantile background and his father was said to have been a notary/money lender. The question of trading for profit was a difficult issue as usury was considered to be a sin. Dante describes Hell in The Divine Comedy as being full of people who had profited from the corruption and abuses of the use of money. To avoid this wealthy families donated money to found chapels as a means of expiating their sins.

Art of the Period

There were also great innovations in art during this period, with a move away from the rigid hieratical Byzantine style to a more natural, expressive style – for example Cimabue’™s Madonna is a huge work, showing angels at the sides of the throne still in the Byzantine style but showing the move away to more naturalism. Giotto’™s Ognissanti Madonna of 1310 shows a more natural portrayal of the mother and child and there is a greater sense of mass and solidity with greater depth and perspective. The angels look as though they really are looking up at the Madonna and child


In The Divine Comedy Dante refers to artistic arrogance in his conversation in Purgatory with Oderiso, an illuminator from Gubbio. He talks of the transient nature of fame and the penalty of pride. Oderiso was supposedly friendly with Giotto and at that time Giotto was greatly praised and had taken precedence over Cimabue:

‘Brother’ he said, the sheets coloured by Franco
The Bolognese, are more brilliant than mine:
The honour is now all his, and mine is less.

Certainly I should not have been so polite
When I was alive, because of my great desire
To excel in this, my heart was engrossed with it.

The penalty of such pride is paid here;
And I should not be here yet, if it were not
That, while I could still sin, I turned to God.

O empty glory of human endeavour!
How little time the green remains on top,
Unless the age that follows is a dull one!

Cimabue thought he held the field
In painting, and now the cry is for Giotto,
So that the other’s fame is now obscured.”
Purgatorio XI 82-96

The Death of St Francis by Giotto in the Bardi Chapel, in the church of Sante Croce shows the move towards much greater realism in painting such as in the range of emotions shown on the monks’™ faces as they surround St Francis on his bier.

Development of the city
Arnolfo Di Cambio(born 1240 ‘“1250 died early 1300s)

Di Cambio was an architect, sculptor and painter. He trained in Sienna under Nicolo Pisano and worked on the marble pulpit in the Sienna Duomo. In 1284 he was called to Florence by the city officials to design the new city walls. The walls made from used materials from the old walls and the lopped towers (as a result of the height restrictions on the towers). When completed the walls were 5 ½ miles long, 7 feet thick and 47 feet high, with massive iron- studded gates (a few of these remain). The gates were closed every evening. The walls were of course for defence, but they also gave the city shape and a sense of belonging to the citizens; were a way of regulating taxes and tolls and were a symbol of the strength, power and prestige of Florence.

He brought both classical and gothic styles of architecture to Florence. He designed the loggia of Orsanmichele, then a corn-market; was involved in work on the Badia, and the design of the façade of Santa Croce is attributed to him.

More about Di Cambio, art, and Dante’s exile in week 5.

Courtly Love in Florence

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Last week on my course on Dante’™s Florence we looked at the development of the city, and the concept of ‘˜courtly love’™ in relation to Dante’™s La Vita Nuova (New Life).

Today we know Florence as a Renaissance city and there is little left of the medieval city that Dante knew. Originally a Roman city, by the end of the 13th century it was an expanding wealthy city bounded by its 12th century walls.

The earliest view of Florence is in the fresco of the Madonna of Mercy 1342, now in the Museo del Bigallo. It shows the city walls, towers, and the Cathedral, which was much smaller then and its dome had not been added. The Campanile was not yet built and the most prominent building was the Baptistery. The churches and religious establishments now within the city were outside the medieval walls, for example Santa Trinita, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce (containing the tombs of Michelangelo and Galileo and a monument to Dante who died in exile in Ravenna in 1321),

The River Arno runs through Florence, crossed by four bridges, including the Ponte Vecchio, built in 1345 after Dante’™s death. It replaced a 12th century bridge that had been destroyed by floods in 1333. Floods have been a perennial problem, the worst one being that in 1966, when many buildings and works of art were damaged. The Ponte Vecchio was the only bridge in the city that survived the bombing during the Second World War.

Although Dante referred to the river in The Divine Comedy as the ‘œcursed and unlucky ditch’ as it was used as a rubbish tip, it has always been important to the city as the means of transporting goods and also for the textile industry. Wool was washed in the river and as it was used by tanners and purse makers in Dante’™s day it must have been a very smelly place. Well known now for its shops there have always been shops on the bridge ‘“ butchers in the 15th century, then goldsmiths from the 16th century onwards.

Other prominent features of the city were the towers, as in other Italian towns (most notably San Gimignano). These were built from the 11th century onwards, with an average height of 225 feet. There were two types, defence and tower houses. I can’™t imagine living in one, the only means of getting up to the rooms was by trap doors and ladders ‘“ I find it hard just getting into our loft! Representations of the towers can be seen in Cimabue’™s Santa Trinita Madonna, now in the Uffizi Gallery, showing the Madonna and Child seated on a hugh throne surrounded by saints and angels and towers.

Set against the backdrop of this medieval city Dante theologised the concept of ‘˜courtly love’™. This concept had originated with the troubadours in France and had developed as poets paid homage to and idolised married women from afar. In Dante’™s case he fell in love at first sight with Beatrice Portinari when he was nine. Later they were both married (to other people) but he continued to put Beatrice on a pedestal, regarding her as a miraculous being. His love was unrequited and she died when she was 24, leaving Dante in despair. He wrote La Vita Nuova (1294) after her death in which he expressed, in a series of sonnets, his love and passion for her and his despair and grief at her death.

Dante’s Florence

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I’ve never ever had any inclination to read Dante’s Divine Comedy before, but I’ve now ordered a copy from Amazon. This is because I have enrolled on a course called Dante’s Florence. My initial interest was Florence not Dante. We have had some beautiful holidays in Italy; the last one (in 2000) was near Florence and then we only had one day in Florence itself. I loved Francesco da Mosto’s TV series on Italy and have wanted to go back to see more of the country – in particular Florence and Venice. So when a friend said she was taking a course on Dante’s Florence I jumped at the chance to find out more.

It was the first session yesterday and I really enjoyed it. This is the description of the course: ‘Studying Dante could not be more divine! Experience the Florence of Dante’s day, including the art and architecture and the poet’s relationship with his native city as conveyed in his writings.’ My impression of Dante’s Inferno was that it is long and difficult and this was reinforced when the tutor said that most people who read The Divine Comedy manage to read through Purgatory and Hell, but few reach Paradise. It’s not necessary to read it for this course, but now I want to know more.

It’s only a six week course and covers a lot of topics including Florentine art and architecture of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Dante’s relationship with Florence with reference to The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova, and his legacy in art and literature.

Dante’s Florence was a much smaller city than today, but there are still some buildings from that period. I was pleased that I had visited some on our visit in 2000, in particular the Baptistry. This was built in the 11th and 12th centuries and Dante was baptised there in 1265. I remember sitting in the Baptistry, gazing with wonder and admiration at the magnificent ceiling decorations in its dome, and walking on the ancient mosaic floor. I have always been fascinated by mosaics, the intricate patterns and marvelled at their composition.

Dante loved learning, hunting and sport, was involved in the struggle for power between the Church and the State, and fought in the Battle of Campaldino in 1289. The great love of Dante’s life was Beatrice Portinari, who he met when he was nine and she was eight. They never married. Dante and Beatrice by Henry Holiday shows him gazing at her as she passes by ignoring him.

I hope we will be looking at the Pre-Raphaelite paintings when the tutor discusses Dante’s legacy to art, as one of my favourite paintings is Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Dante wrote La Vita Nuova in despair at Beatrice’s death and we’ll be studying that next week.