Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings - Volume I.djvu/413

 poet was completely destroyed. Fortunately, Mr. Kirkup was able to make a tracing of the head, afterwards published by the Arundel Society, before Marini damaged its expression and character by painting in a too small and ill-drawn eye, and retouching the whole face, as well as the cap and clothes. This likeness of the poet by Giotto, and the well-known death mask, believed to have been taken from Dante's face after death, are undoubtedly the most authentic records of his appearance at different periods of his life, and as such invaluable. "The one," says Prof. Norton, "is the young poet of Florence, the other the supreme poet of the world." In the Munich Gallery there is a profile likeness of Dante said to have been painted by Masaccio; and Mr. Morris Moore has in his possession at Rome another profile in oils, probably copied from Giotto's fresco, though with certain changes in costume details. Ideal heads of Dante, taken either from the fresco or the mask are, the three by Raphael in the Dispute, the School of Athens, and the Parnassus; and in modern art those of Scheffer, in his Dante and Beatrice and his Francesca da Rimini; of Delacroix in his Dante and Virgil crossing the Styx (Louvre); of Corot in his Dante and Virgil entering the Selva Oscura (Boston Museum of Fine Arts); and of Rossetti in his Vision of Dante.—Vasari, i.; C. E. Norton, Original Portraits of Dante (1865); M. Paur, Jahrbuch der Deutschen Dante Gesellschaft (1869); Spectator, May 11, 1850; The Century (1884), xxvii. 574, 956.

Dante, Giotto, Florence.

DANTE AND BEATRICE, Henry Holiday, Liverpool Gallery; canvas, H. 4 ft. 7 in. × 6 ft. 7 in. Dante standing at right, with his right hand upon a stone parapet on the bank of the river, presses his heart with his left hand, as Beatrice, accompanied by two maidens, passes by; in background, the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio. Grosvenor Gallery, 1883. Etched by C. O. Murray.—Art Journal (1884), 7.

By Ary Scheffer, Mr. A. M. Hemming, near Utrecht, Netherlands; canvas, figures life-size. Beatrice, full length, clad in a robe of pale rose-colour, stands on a cloud to right, with her eyes fixed on the sun (Paradiso, Canto i. 46). Her right hand rests on her breast, and her left hangs by her side. Dante, to left and on a lower plane, seen only to the knees, wears the red hooded cap and long red tunic of the Florentines, and, like Beatrice, gazes upward to the divine light, which, through her power, he is enabled to contemplate. Engraved by N. Lecomte. Scheffer painted this subject three times. The second picture, two-thirds life-size, belongs to C. C. Perkins, Boston; the third, with figures considerably under life-size, is in England, and was exhibited at Manchester in 1857.

DANTE AT RAVENNA, Jean Léon Gérôme, Morris K. Jesup, New York; canvas, H. 1 ft. 8 in. × 3 ft. Dante, walking at left in the meadows, beyond the walls of the city, which is seen in the background; groups of citizens gaze after him as he passes, and point him out to be avoided, according to the legend, as one who had seen hell. Engraved by J. Levasseur.—Art Treas. of Amer., ii. 139.

DANTE AND VIRGIL, Camille Corot, Boston Art Museum; canvas, H. 8 ft. 6 in.