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Search: Colloquium 32 (Spring 2020)

April 20, 2020 @ 1:00 pm - 1:50 pm

Florence.Michelino.Dante.1465

La Divina Commedia di Dante by Domenico di Michelino
Oil on canvass
1465
(H: 2.92 × W: 3.325 m)

In 1840 Giovanni Gaye discovered and published the contract, dated July 30, 1465, between the operai of the Duomo and Domenico di Michelino for this picture, which decorated the north nave of Santa Maria del Fiore. Michelino received the contract in January 1465 and, having completed the work a year later, received payment of Lire 155 on June 19. Rudolph Altrocchi writes, “The year 1465 marked the second centenary of Dante’s birth, andthat it was very probably for the purpose of celebrating this anniversary that the Florentine authorities ordered this picture, as well as to urge the Florentines to bestir themselves, claim Dante’s remains from Ravenna, and honor their greatest poet at last, since they had failed to do so during his life. This painting depicts Dante standing slightly off center to the right of the viewer holding the Divine Comedy. To the figure’s left appears a version of Florence that more closely resembles the city of Michelino’s day in the mid fifteenth century than Dante’s in the last half of the thirteenth. To figure’s right is a depiction of the Inferno. Behind the figure is Purgatorio, and over the entire composition is Paradiso. About this part of the painting, Altrocchi notes, “All Michelino could do to pictorialize, atleast summarily, Dante’s immense and glittering expanses of Paradise was to mark the sky of his picture with concentric stripes of blue of increasing sombreness, and to place in each the planet after which, according to Dante, each heaven is named. To make sure that these planets would be identifiable, Michelino gave to each, except the sun, its astronomical symbol” (See Rudolph Altrocchi, “Michelino’s Dantes,” Speculum 6.1931.15-59).
Text
The inscription, which Altrocchi attributes to Bartolommeo Scala, reads:
Text
Qui caelum cecinit, mediumque imumque tribunal,
Lustravitque animo cuncta poeta suo,
Doctus adest Dantes, sua quem Florentia saepe
sensit consiliis ac pietate patrem.
Nil potuit tanto mors sava nocere poeta
Quem vivum virtus, carmen, imago facit.
Text
Who sang of Heaven, and of the regions twain,
Midway and in the abyss, where souls are judged,
Surveying all in spirit, he is here,
Dante, our master-poet. Florence found
Oft-times in him a father, wise and strong
In his devotion. Death could bring no harm
To such a bard. For him true life have gained
His worth, his verse and this his effigy (translated by Plumptre, 1899).

Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

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Lecture

“Dante’s Divine Comedy: Alternate Worlds and Afterlives,” by Professor Judith Haas from the Department of English

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Reading

Dante, Paradiso, cantos 1-16

Topic of Discussion

In cantos seventeen and eighteen of Purgatorio Virgil discourses about love and its relationship to free will. In Paradiso the concept of love appears for the first time in lines 73-75: “Whether I rose in only the last created / part of my being, O Love that rulest Heaven / Thou knowest, by whose lamp I was translated.” As you have have seen, love plays a significant role throughout the entire Divine Comedy. For the discussion be prepared to share some observations about (1) Dante’s perspective on love, citing specific passages from the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and (2) how they compare to Aristotle’s ideas in books eight and nine of Nicomachean Ethics and Lucretius’ ideas in book four of On the Nature of Things.

Rubric for Colloquium

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Connecting to the Colloquium

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Quiz

Quiz 28 (Spring 2020)

Details

Date:
April 20, 2020
Time:
1:00 pm - 1:50 pm
Event Category:

Venue

Online