Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/385

 12 s. ix. OCT. 15, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 315 DE GONCOURT ON COLLECTING (12 S. ix. 249). The following is from Whitman's Print Collector's Handbook ' : Ma volonte est que mes dessins, mes estampes, mes bibelots, mes livres, enfin les choses d'art qui ont fait le bonheur de ma vie, n'aient pas la froide tombe d'un musee, et le regard bete du passant indifferent, et je demande qu'elles soient toutes eparpillees sous les coups de niarteau da commissaire-priseur et que la jouissance que m'a procuree 1'acquisition de chacune d'elles, soit redonnee, pour chacune d'elles, a un heritier de 'mes^gouts. F. B. M. DANTE'S BEARD (12 S. ix. 271).- MR. BUSH has ventured on the dangerous and delicate question of Dante's beard. It is not certain that Beatrice's admonition The expression was used to children in much the same way that we might say lips of Beatrice it means that Dante's timid attidude was unworthy of a grown-up person. No doubt Dante had a beard at one period of his life ; Boccaccio tells us that he neglected himself after the death of Beatrice, and grew one then, but it did not appear in Giotto's portrait, which re- presented Dante when he was compara- tively young. Nor does it appear in the so-called " death-mask," but this omission might be due to the fact that to obtain the cast the beard would have to be removed. Among the many portraits of Dante that Mr. Holbrooke has reproduced in his book there is not one that represents the poet with a beard. But is it not possible to make too much of portraits of Dante ? The world has many fashions of honouring its supermen, and Dante has been honoured in two ways, strangely different. The artists, the re- presentatives of the intellectual world, have done him honour by giving him a face that he never had perhaps ; for the face that we know so well is the result of a process of evolution that went on for a century or two, in the studios of painters, in the workshops of enamellers and medallists. 'Tis a long journey, it must be confessed, from the placid youthful face of Giotto's fresco to the traditional type of face that mirrors the " grande ame immortellement triste " of which Alfred de Musset speaks, and it is natural to ask how much of the original remains in the final result. On ihf other hand, popular legend, if M. Louis Gillet may be believed, has developed on entirely different lines, and has represented Dante as a sort of clown, endowed with the gift of repartee, who thinks it a proof of intellect to have the last word in a quarrel a jolly fellow, in short, who would not have objected to spend an hour or two with Rabelais in a country inn. Those who are shocked and incredulous at such a state- ment should call to mind some of the stories that were told of Virgil in the Middle Ages. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG. The Authors' Club, Whitehall Court, S.W. Dante is represented with a beard on the tomb assigned to him in Ravenna ; but I know not by what authority it sprouted. It is just possible that in ' Purg.' xxxi. 68, " beard " may have seemed more dignified than mere " chin," or in some other respect ST. SWITHIN. Your correspondent asks if there is any portrait of Dante with a beard. I think I am right in saying that all the portraits of Dante are taken from a post-mortem cast. The only portrait taken during his life was by Giotto in the early part of it. This portrait is, or was, in the Podesta's (Mayor's ?) Palace at Florence, and as late as the early part of the nineteenth century was covered with whitewash. (The English, it seems, are not monopolists in the art of whitewashing.) It represents a face not .yet developed, so as to exhibit those well- marked lines of thought and expression which we see in the usual portraits. The face is smooth and unwrinkled, although the oval contour of the face is, of course, just the same. There are several excellent I prints of it. It is called the " Bargello j portrait," and, I believe, was not discovered (under the whitewash) till 1841. Edmund Fitzgerald said of it : It is a most awful head : Dante when about twenty-five years old. The likeness to the common portraits of him when old is quite evident. All his great poem seems in it ; like the flowers in the bud. J. FOSTER PALMER. 3, Oakley Street, S.W. 3. BURIAL-PLACES OF EMINENT SCIENTISTS (12 S. ix. 250). 10. Sir John Hawkshaw died at his town residence, Belgrave Mansions, but was buried from his country seat, Holly- combe, in Sussex. I did not go to the funeral, but he was probably buried in Liphook churchyard. L. L. K.
 * ' alza la barba " refers to a beard at all.
 * ' Now be a man," and coming from the
 * have suited the poet's purpose better.