"And of virtue he had so much That the body, at death, merited the crown poetical, Boccaccio closed his "Proso popea di Dante" with the words: "Ravenna has the body, and the Almighty Father the soul." Indeed, before there was any general or widespread knowledge of Dante's Paradiso, or third part of the "Divine Comedy," the Venetian Giovanni Quirini declared, in a sonnet, that "from the beautiful flowers of Paradise, Dante, in the other life already gathered the merited fruit." Certainly these tributes, spontaneously given to Dante, after his death, by eminent contemporaries, represent the general judgment of the man (quite as much as of the poet) formed by cultivated men of his time, uninfluenced by factional feeling of any kind. They reflect the universal impression of his character and the distinctive characteristics of his mind and temperament. Detached from the things of this world and weaned from the allurements of passion and of pleasure, by profound meditation on their ultimate end and outcome, in Purgatory and in Hell, Dante bent his whole soul and all his mental energies to the portrayal of that heavenly beatitude to which he hoped to attain. An honorable ambition led him to seek, by that portrayal, the poet's laurel wreath, only as a stepping-stone, however, to an eternal crown in Heaven. Deep students of Dante as both the Orcagnas undoubtedly were, they would naturally place the author of the Paradiso in the Paradise of the just made perfect, but, following the Giottesque tradition, in human companionship, allowing the admission of their own living contemporaries. Strange that the two walls of the Strozzi Chapel, presenting scenic representations of the Judgment and of Paradise, should so long have remained a neglected field of observation for anything of the kind. In an article of 1857, to which Professor Pasquale Papa has recently called attention, Mr. Barlow announced his discovery of an "other portrait of Dante " which he described as "painted by Orcagna in the Paradise of the Strozzi Chapel, in the upper part of the wall to the left of the window." This announcement of Barlow's was made about seven years after the restoration of the rediscovered Giottesque portrait in the chapel of the Florentine palace of the podesta, painted as Giotto first knew Dante, in the days of his early enthusiasms, but, even in that guise, placed in Paradise. Later in the nineteenth century, Ingo Kraus and M. Jules Levallois have noticed the same face and figure in the Strozzi Chapel, but the allusions of some, or all of them, would seem to show a confusion of the Last Judgment, in which their Dante appears, with the Heaven of the just. Herr Volkmann vaguely alludes to a discovery of "Dante among the Blessed," executed by Orcagna, but his lack of precision has led to uncertainty as to whether he meant the alleged Dante in the Last Judgment, or the Paradise of Orcagna. In 1900 M. Jacques Mesnil, in an article already named, and, more recently, in another contribution † to the literature of the subject, has clearly traced the points of resemblance, in this figure in Orcagna's Last Judgment, to the face and features of Dante as perpetuated by artistic tradition. The characteristics common to nearly all of these successive reproductions are summarized by M. Mesnil as follows: "The features are vigorously marked, the bony framework visible, the jaws strong, the countenance elongated, the forehead high, the chin well drawn and energetic, the upper lip a little effaced, the lower lip stronger and slightly protruding; but the nose above all is typical, and it has not been clearly characterized by saying that it is aquiline: it is large and it presents a swelling well defined above the middle" (or bridge); "from there, even to the extremity, its line is straight, or presents a light concavity; finally, the point descends notably, lower than the insertion of the nostrils. This nose is quite. peculiar" (or individual). The figure signalled by M. Mesnil, presumably the same as that noticed by Barlow and others I have named, is in the group of the elect, in the Last Judgment, of the Orcagnas, or of Nardo Orcagna, if executed by him alone, as some think. This figure stands in the highest row of those depicted without the nimbus, or halo of sanctity. The face, certainly, has many of those features that have become traditional and typical of Dantesque. portraiture, and it does show considerable resemblance to the Neapolitan bust of the poet, as seen in profile. In the figure he has indicated in the fresco of the Last Judgment, M. Mesnil thinks to explain the absence of that most prominent character *Iconografia Dantesca. + Miscellanea d'Arte, February, 1903; pub. Florence. wee of the face of Date the projection of the lower lip (here Mthe gia that advised and clumsily executed YSTEMS Les veraden the original work and altered the gamze zmer, PEDOCLE in the lower part of the figure. The gur angers orbed in a robe common to magistrates that time and IT a ser reddish color; the head wears n 1. me garment, and the face is uplifted Cars Badge above, to the right of the hes of Heaven. In meeting objections to ms Layed Dante, before our Lord as Judge, L. amma Dante's attitude is one of adoration, mat de stands among those whose salvation prednost, und that immediately above him is a row Ce the face bears the impress of ecstatic are cited hands are pleadingly upraised as in petition. The face and figure are rather would be expected in a representation of Dante, tan the Dante believed to have been identified appelli, in the Paradise, of this chapel, which I Jescribe. ne Dante of the Last Judgment to be allegoriNow Sol atar off and yearning for the beatific vision, s not out of harmony with the poetic concepAonio Pucci, a contemporary of Orcagna, who, in a ns Coniloquio, in honor of Dante, supposes the poet, natural order of things, to be in Purgatory and Saviour to draw him out, and he beseeches the www.g and the saints to intercede to that end, since x de ceclared, was worthy of Heaven. M. Mesnil, how..... weders that Dante, in this scene of the final Judgment, ids among the just made perfect, and he asserts Ny is "in the midst of an assembly quite as imposing Da represented upon the neighboring fresco "; that "there od kings, high dignitaries of the church, monks, a Xosed caperor (assuredly Trajan or Constantine). Immediately Live Done is a tank of saints. He is placed in evidence the That ix possible, his profile stands out vividly from a ke Aiground; the hands joined, the gaze lost in con ova of the divinity in an act of adoration and not at all you, he appears clad in bright vesture, detaching pon the other figures." M. Mesnil conceives the de sign of the painter to have been to represent, on this side, “the defenders of the true faith in opposition with infidels and heretics, represented on the other side of the window." Signor Alessandro Chiappelli has proceeded upon the presumption (to me well grounded), that it is more natural to seek for portraiture of Dante in the fresco representing the subject of his third "Cantico," or part of the "Divine Comedy," the Paradise upon which the poet had relied for recognition and reward, both here and hereafter. Giotto had set an example and established a certain precedent in the chapel of the Florentine palace of the podesta, where appears that portrait of Dance to which I have already alluded, the oldest in existence, antedating by at least ten years (perhaps more), the minil tresores of the Creagnas, in this Strozzi Chapel. Chiapgell and Professor Fasquale Papa* both discern a certain degendence of the Faradise of Orcagna upon that of Giotto and on the Cagna brothers both had in mind the work of the gat muser whe preceded them. I share the belief of Signor Sure, that istic precedent establishes a point in favor 218 gesungen of place, and that the tender faith of the o me that de cead poet had, from the scarcely finished pages ks. Taanse, dready attained the beatific vision in the (ga pits dest-bed by him, leads us naturally to seek the semis gaysical presence in the Paradise made real by gery. With their minds and imaginations enCoke #7) wthusiasm for the works of the Florentine poet, wory dead in exile, the Orcagnas, when "embellishing Auses the chapel dedicated to the glory of St. Promia komax, in the greatest Dominican church of Florence, g the walls with likenesses of famous churchmen, MAS、NĄ W citizens of renown, perhaps even of artificers, cy of many devout women, would not neglect to Paradise the figure of Dante, who had learned the 279 or St. Thomas in the school of Santa Maria Novella, wy Yad vested them with the immortal form of poetry." pex mndeed, all the more likely from the fact that the o of Paradise given by Dante did not lend itself easily Perpretation and, since it was not possible to the sex of that day and generation to give pictorial expoet's thought, what more natural than to comby portraiture? His ideas and poetical conCxa vài Dante, in Nuova Antologia, April, 1903, Rome. ་ བ་ 、 *་ |