Chapter II
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 outhne, 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 chapel 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 degh 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 photographs 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,
‘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 outhne 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 mention 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 degh 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.