Dante Alighieri (22 page)

    
“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 degli Scrittori Fiorentini
, which contains a life of Dante. In the course of the biography
¹⁸
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,

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

The one is the young poet of Florence, the other the supreme poet of the world—

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