The Influence of Visual Art on Dante

Dante's Alighieri's three-part poem, the Commedia, is the most renowned secular work of its time. Though Dante himself was not of the ecclesiastical order, his expert handling of religious symbolism and biblical themes, as well as his masterful storytelling made the Commedia one of the most widely-read works of the 14th century, and many writers and artists owe their vision of the afterlife to Dante's. However, the poet himself must have drawn his inspiration from some external sources; his works reveal obvious Classical influences, as well as allusions to contemporary textual traditions, such as the Lancelot-Grail, or Vulgate Cycle. However, what is less immediately evident is the undeniable impact of the visual arts upon many of Dante's works and, prominently, the Commedia.

Born and raised in Florence, Italy, Dante was exposed to the artistic traditions of the period from a young age. The capital of Tuscany, Florence was a booming metropolitan center, and the home of an artistic revitalization. The turn of the 14th century saw the dawning of the Italian Renaissance, a marked departure from the stale mimicry of the Byzantine style that dominated the Palaeologan Age. This rebirth was pioneered by the most renowned artists of the era, and occurred contemporaneously in many fields of art. One notable example is Nicola Pisano, for his revolutionary return to Classical Roman standards of realism and form in sculpture. One of Pisano's greatest artistic achievements is his famed pulpit located in the Baptistery of Pisa. The pulpit, which took five years to complete, is a stunning fusion of the French Gothic and Roman Classical styles. Another innovator, this time in the two-dimensional arts, is Duccio di Buoninsegna. He was best known for his departure from the traditions of Constantinople and his contribution to what was to become the International Gothic style, and for his masterpiece, the twenty-one panel Maestà above the High Altar of Siena. This masterwork was revolutionary, in that it began the movement away from Byzantine art, and towards the realism that came to define the remainder of the Renaissance. Though Dante makes no reference to these artists or their works in his Commedia, it is almost certain that he must have admired them at some point in his life, as he traveled often after his exile, and visited both Pisa and Siena.

Though Dante makes no mention of either of these contemporaries, he does allude to the influence of visual art on his work in the form of a direct reference to painter and lifelong friend, Giotto di Bondone. In Canto XI of the Purgatorio, Dante drops Giotto's name in suggesting the ethereality of worldly fame:

"Once Cimabue thought to hold the field
as painter; Giotto now is all the rage,
Dimming the luster of the other's fame."

Though Dante does not explicitly mention his personal relationship with Giotto, it is more important than one might think, and accounts for not only Giotto's favorable mention in Purgatorio, but also much of Dante's own artistic vision.

The work of Giotto di Bondone is considered to be the catalyst to set in motion the improvements in style and skill that defined the Italian Renaissance. He was influenced early in life by Sienese art, such as that of Duccio, and his style reflects that. His attention to detail and accuracy of form, combined with his unique and developed sense of symbolism made him the most influential painter of his time, a fact not unnoticed by Dante. Though when and how Giotto and Dante met is unknown, it is certain that they did, and became close friends. Considering the renown of Cimabue, Giotto's mentor, it is likely that Dante encountered the latter at the former's workshop. The two enjoyed each other's company regularly until Dante's exile, and it is suggested that they still met at intervals afterward. The closeness of their friendship is evidenced by Giotto's portrait of Dante, found on the wall of the Bargello chapel in Florence. Though the authorship of this portrait cannot be linked absolutely with Giotto, the possibility has not been ruled out.

It is apparent that the two gleaned much from their time together, in a kind of symbiotic artistic relationship. For instance, Dante was versed in the tradition of heraldry, or "illuminating," the adornment of manuscripts, as evidenced by his references to the art in some of his works. It is known that Giotto was well-versed in the craft as well, as he would sometimes adorn his works with the familial crests of his patrons. Dante refers to the art of illuminating in Purgatorio XI, the same canto in which he mentions Giotto. Oderisi of Gubbio and Franco of Bologna, two renowned illuminators, stand in a master/pupil relationship parallel to that of Cimabue and Giotto. Here, again, Giotto's influence on Dante is suggested, both by the mention of heraldry, an off-shoot of the art of painting with which Giotto was familiar, and by its proximity to the mention of Giotto.

As has been suggested, Giotto, too, benefited from his association with Dante. Tradition holds that, after his exile, Dante visited his friend in Padua in 1306. The painter was engaged with a commission in the Capella degli Scrovegni, the chapel constructed by Enrico da Scrovegni in expatiation of the sins of his father, the selfsame usurer who bore his family's crest, a "blue sow, pregnant looking," on a moneybag around his neck in Inferno XVII. Dante is said to have influenced Giotto in his decision of what scenes with which to adorn the chapel, which express an overall theme of Salvation. This tradition is borne out by the correspondence of the chapel scenes (including Jesus' expulsion of the money-changers, Judas' betrayal of Jesus, and the figure of Charity trampling moneybags) with the poet's own complex yet clear conception of Divine Justice and Salvation.

Another of Giotto's noteworthy contributions to the arts is to be found in his famed frescoes detailing the cycle of Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis died in 1226 and was canonized on 16 July 1228. Colloquially referred to as "the most saintly of Italians, and the most Italian of saints," his humble and ascetic presence was much missed in Assisi, and the city was eager for any means to memorialize their beloved saint. Attempts by artists to capture St. Francis in paint , such as those found in the Academia delle Belle Arti in Florence, or the Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce, were wholly lacking, and failed to fulfill Assisi's need. Finally, Giotto answered the call, thereby creating one of his most renowned works, the cycle of the life of St. Francis in the upper church of San Francesco.

These frescoes are prime examples of the painter's masterful use of symbolism in his paintings. Though more realistic and true to life than the work of his predecessors, Giotto's style contains a subtle multiplicity of meanings. This is a prominent feature of much of Giotto's work in the upper church, including his fresco depicting St. Francis' mystical marriage to Poverty. Consistent with the notion of Dante and Giotto's marriage of minds, St. Francis' metaphorical marriage to the personification of Poverty is present in Dante's work as well, in Paradiso XI:

"For he in youth his father's wrath incurred
For certain Dame, to whom, as unto death,
The gate of pleasure no one doth unlock...

She, reft of her first husband, scorned, obscure,
One thousand and one hundred years and more,
Waited without a suitor till he came."

Here, Poverty is represented as woman, to whom Francis of Assisi weds himself, after abandoning the traditional future outlined for him by his father in order to enter the service of God. Interestingly, Dante implies a remarriage of this bride, really the lifestyle of religious asceticism; her first husband, who died "one thousand and one hundred years" ago "and more" can only be Christ. To parallel St. Francis of Assisi with Christ, Dante reveals a very high estimation of the importance of the former, owing largely to the proximity of the Saint's legacy to Dante's own Florence, and to Giotto's artistic influences. Considering that Giotto completed his famous fresco prior to Dante's completion of the Paradiso, and the close nature of both their personal and professional relationships, it is highly likely that Dante's treatment of the Mystical Marriage was influenced, at least to some degree, by Giotto's.

Both artists, the poet and the painter, revolutionized their fields with unprecedented degrees of realism, and their adept transformation of the realistic into the symbolic. However, still another parallel between the innovations of Dante and Giotto are their simultaneous advances in the relatability of their subject matter to the lives of those who enjoyed it. Like Dante, the painter was able to uproot famous biblical and ecclesiastical scenes and transplant them into the present, rendering them more applicable in the minds of observers. One of Giotto's methods of increasing the relevance of his subject matter to everyday life is the superiority of his style to that of predecessors. Giotto was the first artist of his age since to incorporate realistic emotions in his subjects; rather than standing rigidly about in unnatural positions and relations to one another, subjects of Giotto's portraits act and react to one another accordingly. For instance, in his Raising of Lasarus at Capella degli Scrovegni, onlookers of the miracle appear appropriately astounded, and worshipful of Jesus. Thus, the painter's meticulous attention to realism and his life-like style drew admirers merely by virtue of the aesthetic value of his works.

However, a contribution at least as great to his advances in style was the way in which he expertly instilled in his works deep symbolic meaning. The chief way in which he did this was simple and elegant: in all of his works, men and women are portrayed in contemporary Italian garb, in the Italian landscapes and cities of Tuscany. In this way, he preserved the original meaning and significance of the subject matter, but rendered it more applicable to the modern observer. Simply by virtue of the similarity between the settings and characters in the paintings to Italian citizens and cities, Giotto bridged the gap of a thousand years and more than a thousand miles. No longer were the familiar scriptural events relegated to some faraway ecclesiastical land, divorced from everyday reality; they were depicted in one's own city. In this way, Giotto impacted not only the arts, but also the contemporary conception of the place of religion in one's own life.

In this capacity, Giotto's artistic vision again parallels Dante's own. The artists share such a degree of commonality in their symbolic treatment of ecclesiastical themes that Giotto's paintings might be considered the pictorial equivalent of Dante's poems, and the two, interdependent. The poet, too, heightens the relevance of his own works by including numerous Italian characters, localities, and events in his Commedia, both Florentine and otherwise. Not a reader alive during Dante's time would have been unfamiliar with the political figures and events that found their way into the canticas of Dante's Commedia, infamous or otherwise.

Understandably, the environs and developments in which Dante lived significantly influenced his works, as well. From his education in the Classics to the wanderings of his own exile, numerous forces worked upon Dante's experience to shape his poetic vision. He traveled much after his exile from Florence, and was doubtless influenced by his time in the various cities in which he resided and visited. For instance, in 1319, Guido Novello of Polenta invited Dante to move to Ravenna from his current lodging with Cangrande in Verona. However, before he left, he began work on the Paradiso, Canto XVII of which is a tribute to Cangrande's magnanimity.

In Ravenna, Dante no doubt saw the renowned mosaics at St. Vitale, one of which features Emperor Justinian and his retinue. The mosaic was a tribute the emperor's greatness and a testament to his position as "regent of Christ on earth," by virtue of the institution of caesaropapism, or his power as both secular emperor and figurehead of the Christian faith. In the portrait, Justinian is accompanied by twelve attendants, an allusion to Christ's Twelve Apostles, he is elaborately garbed in royal purple, a halo encircles his head, and an attendant holds a shield bearing the Chi-Ro. This mosaic no doubt inspired Dante, already predisposed toward the synthesis of Classical and Christian themes, in his handling of the Canto VI of the Paradiso, in which Emperor Justinian appears before the poet:

"Caesar I was, and am Justinian,
Who, by the will of primal Love I feel,
Took from the laws the useless and redundant;

And ere unto the work I was attent,
One nature to exist in Christ, not more,
Believed, and with such faith was I contented.

But blessed Agapetus, he who was
The supreme pastor, to the faith sincere
Pointed me out the way by words of his."

In Canto VI, in keeping with the motif of right knowledge as the key to salvation, Emperor Justinian acknowledges not only the error of his former paganism, but also of his former monophysism. It is not enough to merely believe; one must also believe correctly. Prior to his conversion at the counsel of Pope Agapetus, Justinian was a monophysite, meaning that he didn't believe in the dual nature of Christ. It was not until he came to embrace both Christ's Divine and human aspects that he could come to a full understanding not only of Christianity, but also of what is required to be an effective and just ruler. Also, Justinian's monologue places his conversion from monophysism before his successes as emperor and his reunification of the Roman Empire. This narrative choice establishes the preeminence of faith over secular matters, even governing an empire. Also, by emphasizing the indispensability of Christianity, Justinian, a highly successful emperor in the time of Rome's decline, establishes the correct relationship of secular and ecclesiastical power. The emperor proceeds to summarize the history of the Roman Empire after his death, setting the stage for the subsequent events and highlighting those of Dante's own time. By juxtaposing the high-minded principles and beliefs of the Classical era with the duplicitous political machinations of Dante's, the poet allows the reader to form his own conclusions about whether the Christian world has progressed or declined since Justinian's time.

Over the course of the Commedia's broad yet incisive scope, Dante paints a masterful portrait of ecclesiastical traditions, Italian politics, and the drama of personal redemption. Through his innovate and realistic style, and his expert manipulation of Classical and biblical sources he reveals his command over the poetic medium. Dante did not write in a vacuum, however, and undoubtedly drew inspiration from a multitude of influences, both poetic and visual; the evidence for this synthesis of written word and visual art abounds in the breathtaking imagery and symbolism of the Commedia.

Bibliography

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Jacoff, Rachel. The Cambridge Companion To Dante.
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Alighieri, Dante. Purgatory. Trans.
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Alighieri, Dante. Inferno, Trans.
Mark Musa. New York: Penguin Books. 1984.

Alighieri, Dante. Paradiso. Trans.
Peter Bondanella. New York: Sterling Publishing Co. 2006.

Emily Pegues. "The Mosaics of St. Vitale, Ravenna."
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