[In the following essay, Fengler and Stephany demonstrate Dante's knowledge of art as evidenced in Canto X of Purgatorio, and furnish examples of the type of art that he may have observed and been inspired by.]

The observation that the visual arts inspired certain sections of Dante's Divine Comedy has frequently been made. Therefore an understanding of the type of art which Dante would have seen aids the reader in understanding Dante's imagery. When the poet borrows ideas from the visual arts, he utilizes them not as mere decorative additions to the Comedy; rather, the actual style of art invoked contributes to the meaning of Dante's passages. We will examine the reliefs in canto X of Purgatory and the mosaic images recurrent in Paradise as examples of Dante's familarity with both the visual appearance and the underlying stylistic implications of art.

Furthermore, we suggest that much of the basic structure of Purgatory and Paradise is conceived in pictorial terms. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, poets in central Italy, writing in what Dante called the dolce stil nuovo (“sweet new style”), were experimenting with a vernacular poetry of increased emotional and psychological depth. At the same time, sculptors such as Nicola and Giovanni Pisano and painters such as Giotto and his followers reflect a similar shift in style and sensibility in their respective art forms. In Purgatory, where souls cleanse themselves of their worldly attachments, the inspiration for the passages dealing with art seems to be this new, “worldly,” materialistic style of sculpture and painting. In Paradise, however, Dante uses the earlier, more other-worldly, abstract style of the Byzantine mosaics as the basis for many of his visions.

In canto X of Purgatory, on the terrace of the proud, Dante finds three reliefs carved into the rocky face of the mountain, each depicting an example of humility intended to provide moral instruction to help expiate the sin of pride. The figures in the reliefs are so convincingly rendered that “nature herself would there be put to shame” (Purg. X, 33).¹ The representational fidelity stressed by Dante was one of the remarkable stylistic innovations of artists of his own period, who combined the traditional medieval didactic intent with increased naturalism.

One of the sources for this shift toward naturalism was a renewed interest in the art of the classical past. Just as Dante turned frequently to ancient authors for inspiration, so the figurative artists took a new look at remnants of pre-Christian antiquity. The naturalistic representation characteristic of the Greeks and Romans was, therefore, something of which the thirteenth century was increasingly conscious.

Dante himself acknowledges a resurgent interest in the art of the ancient world in claiming that Polykleitos would have envied the results achieved in the Purgatory reliefs (X, 32-33). Dante's reference does not imply that he had firsthand knowledge of the work of this particular fifth-century b.c. sculptor. While he had undoubtedly seen some antique remains both in Florence and on his travels, his allusion to Polykleitos would have been based on literary convention. By the thirteenth century, it is doubtful that any original work by Polykleitos had survived the damaging raids and lootings of the early Middle Ages.²

Nevertheless, Polykleitos remained one of the most celebrated classical masters because his reputation had outlived his material accomplishments. In his Natural History, Pliny wrote of Polykleitos' best known work, the Doryphorus (Spear-Bearer), as follows:

Polykleitos … made what artists have called the model statue [or “canon”] from which, as from a sort of standard, they study the lineaments; so that he, of all men, is thought in one work of art to have exhausted all the resources of art.³

Cicero and Quintilian also discussed the pivotal importance of the Doryphorus in the evolution of Greek sculpture, and Plutarch added the observation that Polykleitos was concerned with a high degree of detail and finish in his work⁴ (an important consideration also in the sculptural reliefs in Purgatory). The testimony of ancient authors, therefore, stressed the importance of the lifelike qualities in this exemplary artist. Thus when Dante proclaims that Polykleitos would have been jealous of the representational skills demonstrated in the Purgatory reliefs, he is, in a shorthand way, speaking of the mimetic process.

Another source for the increased humanization of art at Dante's time was the influence of the mendicant orders, and in particular of the Franciscans. Given the long-standing supposition that Dante himself was a third order Franciscan, this may be particularly relevant for our consideration. Francis and his followers urged people to imagine, on the basis of their own experiences, what life must have been like for Christ and his family. For example, the Franciscan devotional book Meditations on the Life of Christ, written by the Tuscan “Pseudo-Bonaventura” in the second half of the thirteenth century, suggests the following model for meditation upon the holy family's Flight into Egypt:

How did they carry food with them? And where did they rest and spend the night? Have pity on them, for it was a very difficult, great, and long exertion for them as well as for the child Jesus. Accompany them and help to carry the child.⁵

The emphasis which the Franciscans placed on the human aspects of religious stories led to a greater stress on humanity in the artistic depiction of such scenes. Thus the renewed interest which we have already observed in antique art, where man and his relationship to the world had been of central importance, was, perhaps unintentionally, one by-product of Franciscan teachings.

The Franciscan ideals were, of course, primarily spread through their preaching.⁶ In addition, the Franciscans developed a form of religious drama in which they sometimes “impersonated” the holy figures of whom they were speaking, a practice which had evolved into a type of Franciscan play in Florence in the latter part of the thirteenth century.⁷ Francis himself had not hesitated to use visual aids when he felt they would make abstract religious concepts more real. His setting up of the Christmas crib at Greccio is the best known example. Art inspired by Franciscanism shows protagonists increasingly lifelife in appearance and behavior. A comparison of Antelami's Romanesque relief of the Flight into Egypt (Parma, Baptistry, 1204-1211) and Giotto's treatment of the same subject in the Arena chapel at Padua (ca. 1305) illustrates these changes.

In canto X of Purgatory, Dante enters Purgatory proper, where art regularly serves a moral function, aiding in the systematic refinement of the souls. The lifelike reliefs that Dante finds in this canto are the first and most carefully articulated example of Purgatory's art. They had been executed by God himself, an unerring craftsman, as examples of humility for those who had been excessively proud. Therefore, we may infer that Dante approves of an art rooted in sensual reality as best suited for the instruction of those who retain a lingering attachment to earthly things. Just as their vices had been indulged through the senses, virtue must also be reinforced through the senses.⁸ Indeed, the visual impact of these carved reliefs is so persuasively naturalistic that, Dante tells us, other senses, specifically hearing and smell, seem to be engaged as well.

Moreover, the arrangement of the three reliefs and their relationship to each other reflect contemporary artistic practice. Images from the Old Testament and from pagan antiquity frequently foreshadowed Christian events or elaborated on the moral lesson in a Christian story. The three examples of humility in the Purgatory reliefs come from three distinct literary and historical traditions: the New Testament (the Annunciation to Mary), the Old Testament (David and Michal), and Roman History (Trajan and the Widow). A parallel example in art is provided by Giotto's Arena Chapel frescoes. Here small medallions immediately preceding New Testament narrative scenes are typologically related to these scenes. The subject matter of the medallions is drawn in part from the Old Testament; Jonah and the Whale, for example, precedes the Lamentation, the moment before Christ's entombment. Popular legend, however, provides the subject matter of the lioness and her cubs, who were believed to have remained lifeless for three days and then to have received the breath of life from their mother. This medallion appropriately precedes the fresco depicting the Angels at the Tomb and the Noli Me Tangere, images associated with Christ's resurrection.

The Perugia Fountain (1277-78) by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano provides a similar sculptural example. Its thematic program combines Christian elements with Old Testament heroes, ancient history, mythology, and a cycle illustrating the Labors of the Months.⁹ Moreover, the panels of this fountain run in a continuous band which the viewer is invited to read in an episodic way, much as Dante's reader experiences the humility reliefs. The four great pulpits also sculpted by the Pisani¹⁰ were banded with reliefs depicting episodes from the life of Christ which can also be read sequentially, which are also highly naturalistic, and which also serve a didactic function. With the rise of the preaching orders in the thirteenth century, the pulpit's importance as a piece of church furniture increased greatly. The educational programs that were preached from the pulpits would have been well reinforced by the kind of art depicted on them: didactic and realistic, so as to aid meditation. In canto X of Purgatory, Dante has God sculpt in a similar manner.

Certain details of the Purgatory reliefs support the theory that Dante was a careful observer of the art around him. When he says that the postures and gestures of the figures were so persuasive that their words seemed to be heard, he may have been entertaining a visual memory of the artistic tradition in which the actual words of the protagonists were incorporated in written form directly into the work. Such a practice was, as a matter of fact, especially widespread in images of the Annunciation to the Virgin. A familiar example, executed shortly after Dante's lifetime but reflecting a pre-existent tradition, is Simone Martini's Uffizi Annunciation (1333), where the angel's words to Mary issue forth in a horizontal stream on the gold background of the painting. In Purgatory's Annunciation, “one would have sworn that [the angel] was saying, ‘Ave,’” and that “these words were imprinted in [Mary's] attitude: ‘Ecce ancilla Dei’” (X, 40-45). In God's superior art, however, the words arise from the naturalism of the scene and need not be depicted literally.

Dante seems also to have been aware of the different styles available to sculptors in executing reliefs. His Annunciation shows Gabriel and the Virgin against a neutral ground without secondary props, whereas the reliefs of David and of Trajan are filled with descriptive details. The cart and oxen, seven choirs, smoking censers, and Michal sitting at a palace window form the background of the former, and soldiers carrying banners which were blowing in the wind, of the latter.¹¹ Both of these approaches were used by sculptors of Dante's generation. The figures could be handled quite naturalistically in either case. The decision of whether to fill the background with supplementary visual information or to leave it neutral was based on both aesthetic and practical considerations.

The same artist might use one approach or the other depending on the nature of his work and its intended location and also on the amount of information required to make the subject matter clearly recognizable. For example, the Pisani carved the individual scenes for their pulpits with a wealth of characters and episodes which tended to fill each panel from side to side and top to bottom. The relief from the Siena Cathedral Pulpit (1265-1268) illustrating the Presentation in the Temple, Herod and the Magi, Joseph's Dream, and the Flight into Egypt demonstrates this horror vacui. In this case, the style comes in part from the desire to show several chronologically related events in a single relief format so as to be as complete as possible about the canonical account of Christ's life within a structurally limited number of episodes.¹² The figures were cut with deep pockets of shadow between them so that they would still “read” clearly in the dark church interior.

Yet the same artist, a few years later, used the alternative approach to his relief carvings for the Perugia Fountain. Here, in the Labors of the Months, for example, a figure in fairly shallow relief is silhouetted against a neutral ground of blank stone. The paired representatives of December, who prepare meat for the winter feasts, are in poses which convey succinctly the activity in which they are engaged. The only other objects present are the dog which has aided them in the hunt and the zodiacal sign of Capricorn in the upper left that identifies the particular period of time depicted. Only the minimum information necessary for an understanding of the iconography has been transmitted. It has been suggested that this simplified handling may have been better suited to the exterior placement of the fountain. A neutral background with shallow relief figures may have been determined to “weather” better than the Siena pulpit style would.¹³ It is also true that the artists had a more extended relief surface in the fountain base and did not need to condense the information presented into a relatively small number of panels.

God, the sculptor of the Purgatory reliefs, has used both techniques in his work. The Annunciation is a theme which had a long iconographic tradition in art and which formed an integral part of every pictorial cycle dealing with the life of Christ or that of the Virgin. A relief of this subject would have been immediately recognizable to viewers of Dante's time, and the attitudes of the two figures alone would have conveyed the entire notion of Mary's acceptance of God's will. The stories of David and Trajan, while suited admirably to the didactic function which they are asked to perform, are far more obscure and must be bolstered by as much descriptive information as possible in order to become legible. Therefore they have been sculpted in the alternative mode. What Dante has done in his imaginary sculptures is to shift from one prevailing style to another in order to make his points clear. Such creativity provides a further demonstration of his intimate awareness of artistic options.

Finally, it is frequently forgotten that a large number of medieval relief panels were embellished with gilt and polychrome. There is evidence, for example, that the edges and linings of the drapery in the Siena and Pistoia pulpits of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, respectively, were colored in this fashion.¹⁴ Thus when Dante speaks of the soldiers around Trajan with their standards flying overhead and says “above them the eagles in gold moved visibly in the wind” (Purg. X, 80-81), he is envisioning similar touches of gold on the grounds of the flags.¹⁵

Dante's response to the visual arts has clearly enriched his poem. The great surge of artistic activity in Tuscany during Dante's lifetime would probably have led any sensitive soul to contemplate such productions with amazement and admiration. Dante, however, had an especially heightened awareness of art, perhaps because he himself appears to have been at least an amateur artist.¹⁶ In chapter 35 of La Vita Nuova, Dante, while thinking about his departed Beatrice, begins to draw an angel on panel. Two aspects of this revelation are noteworthy. The first, as many have noted, is that Dante portrays himself as a man given to making artistic images to fill an inner need at a time of emotional duress. The second is the more explicit information that Dante was drawing on panel. Historically, we are well before the period in which drawings were valued for their own sake. Such drawings usually constituted the preliminary step in the making of a subsequent painting on that same panel.¹⁷ Thus Dante's familiarity with the concerns of the working artist may go well beyond what has been expected. This “secret life” of Dante remains, of course, in the realm of speculation.

When we turn out attention from Purgatory to Paradise, we find that Dante's interest in art continues, but no longer in an art that is contemporary and naturalistic. The didactic function of Purgatory's art, to tame worldly inclinations with “worldly” models, would be redundant in Paradise. The very fact that the souls are in Paradise demonstrates that they have already been perfected. The goal of the climb up Mount Purgatory has been to become worthy of entering God's presence, and, once there, the souls have no further need of instruction.

The appropriateness of the kind of art Dante chose to use in much of Paradise is implied in certain aspects of the medieval light metaphysics tradition revealed in this canticle.¹⁸ In this tradition, God is the pure light which stands in the Neo-Platonic tradition as the source of Being. Truth, Love, Beauty, and the other abstract pefections. Thus, when Dante and Beatrice enter the Empyrean, she informs him that they have come to the heaven of this pure light:

light intellectual full of love, love of true good full of joy, joy that transcends every sweetness.

(XXX, 40-42)

This light shines throughout the universe, and is absorbed by and reflected by all things in proportion to their perfection. The opening lines of Paradise assume the reader's familiarity with this tradition:

The glory of the All-Mover penetrates through the universe and reglows in one part more, and in another less.

(I, 1-3)

Since all creatures, men included, express their value in their ability to absorb this light, the souls' radiance increases as they draw closer to God. If we remember that this light is the source of moral perfection, the aptness of this phenomenon will be clear. This divine light, moreover, retains its integrity, even though reflected from all creatures in proportion to their worth. As Beatrice puts it just before entering the Empyrean's “Primal Light”:

Behold now the height and breadth of the Eternal Goodness, since it has made itself so many mirrors wherein it is reflected, remaining in itself One as before.

(XXIX, 142-45)

Dante's artistic problem in Paradise is to create visual images for such a heaven, where light retains its conceptual unity even while its reflections are scattered abroad. One of his principal solutions, especially after the Circle of the Sun, is to describe his several visions of the saved as mosaic images akin to the ones he would have encountered in the city of Ravenna, where he completed Paradise. The dominant artistic character of Ravenna, then as now, was found in its many splendid sixth-century Byzantine mosaics. These works embody visual principles which, in direct contrast with the practices of Dante's contemporaries, are intentionally non-naturalistic, abstract, and other-worldly. Many critics have noted in Paradise “a tonal and figurative analogy with the mosaic treasures of Ravenna.”¹⁹ However, we would argue for a connection that is precise and intimate rather than general and impressionistic.

In order to understand this relationship we must bear in mind the way a mosaic is made and the way it achieves its aesthetic effect. In mosaic technique, tesserae, the individual pre-cut tiles of various sizes and colors, are so arranged as to depict the desired image. This much is readily apparent in photographs. What two-dimensional reproductions do not reveal, however, is that the tiles are intentionally set at oblique angles to each other. A smooth, continuous surface would frustrate one of the principal effects of Byzantine mosaics, namely the shimmering, other-worldly play of colors as the light source or observer changes position. According to Giuseppe Bovini, this phenomenon occurs as follows:

[In the mosaic technique] light is multiplied because as it strikes the surface it is automatically split into an infinite number of chromatic units. … When one realizes that these tesserae are small cubes of enamel, glass, marble, and sometimes even mother of pearl, … it is easy to understand why an unknown poet, overwhelmed by the dazzling brilliance of light sparkling from the mosaic-covered walls, was inspired to write the following lines which were transcribed on the vestibule walls of the Archiepiscopal Chapel [in Ravenna]: “Either light was born here or, imprisoned here, it reigns supreme (Aut lux nata est aut capta hic libera regnat).”²⁰

It is not surprising, therefore, given the importance of light to Dante and to the mosaics, that several of Paradise's images seem inspired by Ravenna's mosaics.²¹ The two circles of stars—souls of philosophers and theologians—that ring Dante and Beatrice in the sun recall such mosaic ceilings as that of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, where stars circle around a cross. The great cross glowing from the surface of Mars brings to mind the apsidal mosaic in the Church of S. Apollinare in Classe, where the transfiguration of Christ is symbolized by a cross.²² Furthermore, the Cross of Mars flashes forth an image of Christ which may be compared with the centralized head of Christ in the S. Apollinare cross. As we will argue shortly, the eagle of Jupiter is also inspired by mosaic technique, as is the river of light in the Empyrean.

Dante's use of visual motifs in Purgatory and Paradise, however, extends beyond inspiration for specific images. In fact, in a fundamental way, the very relationship of individual souls to God in the two regions is conceived of in terms of the art we have discussed. In Purgatory, the souls are the material of God's art: God shapes them into the perfect moral form they must assume before they will feel free to enter Paradise.²³ This artistic metaphor, which had been implicit throughout the terraces of Purgatory, is made explicit by Beatrice in the first canto of Paradise. She explains that in God's design, man should return to heaven, but that man's free will can frustrate this desire, “even as a shape often does not accord with the intention of the art, because the material is deaf to respond” (Para. I, 127-129).

That the souls in Purgatory are the material of God's art is dramatized in canto X on the terrace of the proud. After Dante and Virgil study the marvelous marble panels sculpted directly by the hand of God, the souls of the proud enter, each bent under the weight of the unhewn stone he is carrying. Dante describes them as statuary, the very art form God has chosen to use for their instruction:

As for corbel to support a ceiling or a roof, sometimes a figure is seen to join the knees to the breast—which, unreal, begets real distress in one who sees it—so fashioned did I see these when I gave good heed. They were truly more or less contracted according as they had more and less upon their backs; and he who showed the most suffering in his looks, seemed to say, weeping, “I can no more.”

(X, 130-139)

Dante responds to these souls as he had to the reliefs. Just as the imagined suffering of the corbels can inspire real suffering in the observer, these souls are so fashioned that Dante reads their postures and hears what they seemed to say: “I can no more.” In hearing their “visible speech” as he had previously heard what seemed to be said in the three panels, Dante makes the point that the proud are also being sculpted by God and will serve a didactic function for Dante analogous to that of the previous artworks.

In contrast to the souls in Purgatory, who still need to be shaped and refined, the souls in Heaven may be thought of as tesserae, as the already shaped, already polished stones that communicate their meaning not in isolation from each other, but only in the composite images they form in relationship with one another. In the cross of Mars, for example, the image of the white cross on the red planet is comprised of the souls of the saved warriors, each an individual reflection of God's glory, placed together as mosaic tiles in the cruciform shape. Cacciaguida, as typical of the souls in the cross, is variously a mirror (XVII, 123 and XVIII, 2), a jewel (XV, 22, 85 and XVIII, 115, a flame (XVI, 29), or a glow (XVIII, 25). The two intersecting bands of such souls are like two galaxies or two dust-laden sunbeams (XIV, 97-117), suggesting anew the mosaic analogy.

In Jupiter, the souls have a mobility uncharacteristic of mosaic tiles. Here they arrange themselves successively as each of the 35 letters of the Latin inscription, “diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram” (“love justice, you who govern the earth”). The souls then rearrange themselves from the final “m” of terram to a lily, and then to an imperial eagle. The animation is miraculous, but the individual images thus created are, once again, mosaic. The eagle is a single image comprised of “interwoven souls,” each “a little ruby” on which a ray of sun glowed (XIX, 1-6). Dante later calls these souls “the bright and precious jewels wherewith I saw the sixth luminary engemmed” (XX, 16-17). The eagle then calls special attention to the six souls who together comprise his eye. This is a difficult image to visualize, but one made simpler if we consider the eagle a mosaic and the saved souls the tesserae. The detail of Saint Peter's head from the Orthodox Baptistery in Ravenna helps to make the point, since his eye is similarly formed (Figure 4). David is the stone set as the pupil, and the other five are stones set around as the eyelid (XX, 31 ff). The gems (XVIII, 115) are in reality the “soldiery of Heaven” (XVIII, 124), who have been arranged in these shapes by God the artist (XVIII, 109).

Finally, in the Empyrean, the river of light is clearly conceived as a mosaic image:

I saw a light in form of a river glowing tawny between two banks painted with marvelous spring. From out this river issued living sparks and dropped on every side into the blossoms, like rubies set in gold. Then, as if inebriated by the odors, they plunged again into the wondrous flood, and as one was entering another was issuing forth.

(XXX, 61-69)

Dante comes to understand that the flowers are saints and the sparks, angels, flashing between the saints and the river of light. The theological implications are later clarified (XXXI, 1-24), but the visual intent seems to be to suggest with words the effect of a mosaic similar to the landscape portions of the S. Apollinare Transfiguration (Figure 5). The multi-faceted surface of such a m⊙saic shoots momentary rays of reflected light off in various directions. The flickering of candles or the movement of the observer's head is enough to send these “angels” darting about the surface of a mosaic.

Beatrice then asks Dante to drink with his eyes from the river of light to prepare himself for a more complete vision of truth. She explains as follows:

The stream and the topazes which enter and issue, and the smiling of the grasses, are the shadowy prefaces of their truth.

(XXX, 76-78)

Dante does what Beatrice had requested and then sees the Empyrean as it really “is,” not as it had been symbolically manifested. The two-dimensional representation becomes three-dimensional as we leave the river of time for a fuller comprehension of the eternal present. What had been depicted as flowers reveal themselves as “the saintly host” (XXXI, 2). They appear to Dante in bodily form, seated within the amphitheatric rose. In reality they are saints; in God's art, they were tiles in the mosaic flowers.

Notes

1. This and all subsequent references to Dante are to Charles Singleton's Italian text and English translation of The Divine Comedy, 3 vols. in 6, Princeton, 1970-1975.

2. Cornelius Vermeule, Polykleitos, Boston, 1969, p. 11.

3. Book 34, ch. 19. The quotation is from the translation by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, vol. 6, London, 1857, pp. 171-172.

4. Gisela M. A. Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 2nd ed., New Haven, 1930, pp. 246-248.

5. Translated by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green, Princeton, 1961, p. 65.

6. Pope Urban IV (1261-1264) extended the privilege of granting preaching rights, formerly the prerogative of bishops, to the mendicant orders as well. Such preaching could, furthermore, be done either in Latin or in the vernacular. Thus, as Michael Ayrton, Giovanni Pisano, Sculptor, New York, 1969, p. 29, has pointed out, the devotional ideas of the Franciscans soon reached a broad audience.

7. Edward A. Armstrong, Saint Francis: Nature Mystic, Berkeley, 1973, p. 241.

8. One is reminded of Thomas Aquinas' argument for the necessity of sacraments, physical signs of a spiritual reality. Because in sin man subjected himself to corporeal things, the healing remedy should be applied directly to the affected part (Summa Theologiae, question 61, article 1).

9. These labors contributed to the religious meaning of the monument in that they were considered the means by which man began the process of redemption after his original fall from grace. Ayrton traces this notion to Vincent of Beauvais (Giovanni Pisano, p. 44).

10. Nicola Pisano, Pisa Baptistery Pulpit, 1259/60; Nicola Pisano, Siena Cathedral Pulpit, 1265-68; Giovanni Pisano, Pulpit for Sant’ Andrea, Pistoia, 1297-1301; Giovanni Pisano, Pisa Cathedral Pulpit, 1302-10.

11. Giovanni Fallani, Dante e la cultura figurativa medievale, Bergamo, 1971, pp. 87-91, observes this difference in style without explaining it further.

12. The choice, of course, also reflects aesthetic preferences. For one thing, the multitude of episodes is further explained by an increased interest in French Gothic art, which tended to be less classically restrained than Nicola had been earlier in his career.

13. John White, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1250 to 1400, Baltimore, 1966, p. 52.

14. White, Art and Architecture, pp. 37, 49.

15. This point has also been made by Fallani, Dante e la cultura figurativa, p. 91. Primarily because of the mention of gold in Dante's description of these reliefs, Licisco Magagnato, “La città e le arti a Verona al tempo di Dante,” Dante e la cultura veneta, eds. Vittore Branca and Giorgio Padoan, Florence, 1966, pp. 285-286, has produced an elaborate explanation of how Dante moved back and forth between borrowings from miniature painting and those from relief sculpture to form the imaginary Purgatory reliefs. Polychrome, however, is not incongruous with relief sculpture.

16. At this time, the status of the working artist was not elevated. Such inclinations, therefore, would not have been considered appropriate for a gentleman and would have been practiced only by someone with a real interest in artistic problems.

17. The suggestion was first made by Valerio Mariani in Conversazioni d’arte, Naples, 1957, pp. 7-8, and is cited by Fallani, Dante e la cultura figurativa, p. 29.

18. For a full discussion, see Joseph A. Mazzeo, Structure and Thought in the Paradiso, Ithaca, New York, 1958, pp. 141-166; and his Medieval Cultural Tradition, Ithaca, New York, 1960.

19. Eugenio Chiarini, “Ravenna,” Enciclopedia Dantesca, vol. 4, Rome, 1973, p. 862.

20. Ravenna Mosaics, trans. Gustina Scaglia, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1956, p. 6.

21. Rosario Assunto, “Concetto dell’arte e ideali estetici in Dante,” La critica d’arte nel pensiero medioevale, Milan, 1961, p. 272.

22. Chiarini, Enc. Dant., p. 863.

23. Philip Berk makes a similar point in “Some Sibylline Verses in Purgatorio X and XII,” Dante Studies, vol. 90 (1972), pp. 59-76.