Commentary
Introduction
Giotto is painting the portrait of Dante on a chapel wall, while Beatrice
moves below in a procession of women. Cimabue stands nearby, but
Cavalcanti—who is present in the Fogg picture and who also
figured in the untraced watercolour—is not here. The picture was
to have been the first in a Dantescan triptych. The other two panels of the
triptych would have shown Dante as a Florentine magistrate sentencing
Cavalcanti to exile, and Dante at the court of Can Grande della Scala.
Sketches toward the latter survive as
<hi rend="i">Dante at Verona</hi>
.
The Art celebrated in DGR's picture is clearly a Rossettian
“double work of art.” Indeed, the picture underscores
DGR's attachment to the ideal of relationship per se, with love and
friendship reflecting an interchange he pursued in his life as an artist,
designer, and writer.
Production History
This is the drawing DGR made in 1852 preliminary to the watercolour of the same year (the latter now
untraced). DGR intended to do a painting on the subject but never did. The
unfinished replica, now in the Fogg Museum,
seems to have been planned at this time as well, according to Hunt's letter;
it was not executed until 1859.
Iconographic
The arrangement is all but allegorical of DGR's “triple
relation”
of “Art, Friendship, and
Love”
(see
Fredeman,
<hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi>
, 53. 1
). Dante and Giotto represent
Art, the relations between the various men (but especially between Giotto
and Dante) represent Friendship, and Beatrice and the women focus the
subject of Love.
Historical
A complex set of historical circumstances invest this picture. Giotto's original picture—a fresco
celebrating the glory of Florence—included the figure of Dante
holding a pomegranate. It was painted sometime between 1290-1300 on the
altar wall of the Palace of the Podesta (later the Bargello) in Florence,
but was subsequently covered with whitewash. It was rediscovered in 1840.
Seymour Kirkup, one of the scholars who made the discovery, made a copy of
the portrait of Dante and sent it to Gabriele Rossetti, from whom it passed
to DGR.
Literary
According to DGR, the picture “illustrates a passage in
the
<hi rend="i">Purgatorio</hi>
[XI. 94-99]. . .where Dante speaks of Cimabue, Giotto, the two
Guidos (Guinicelli and Cavalcanti. . .) and, by implication, himself.
For the introduction of Beatrice, who with the other women. . .are
making a procession through the church, I quote a passage from the
<hi rend="i">Vita Nuova</hi>
[XXVI: Sonnet: For certain he hath seen all
perfectness]
”
(see DGR's letter to Thomas Woolner, 1 January 1853,
Fredeman,
<hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi>
, 53. 1
). DGR
made a translation of
the passage from Dante.
Autobiographical
It is clear that DGR took the imaginary event pictured in the scene as an
emblematic figuration of some of his most cherished ideas about art, and in
particular about art's relation to love, friendship, and poetry.
Bibliographic
Surtees,
<hi rend="i">A Catalogue Raisonné</hi>
, vol. 1, 19-20 (no. 54A).
Surtees,
<hi rend="i">A Catalogue Raisonné</hi>
, vol. 2, no. 45.