Introduction

Paolo Procaccioli

The world of art, in Dante’s time, considered the poet in both a personal capacity and with regard to his work. Whereas from Giotto onwards, in Florence, the Dante in the spotlight was not only the poet but the man, the citizen and the protagonist of political life, in the rest of Italy, it was the author of the Divine Comedy. He owed this attention to a poetic style immediately seen to be charged with an unrivalled figurative tension. A tension that could only be released - and also, in practical terms, explained - if the reader made an effort that could not be reduced to the conventional forms of interpretation. A story and a reasoning like those used in the poem, substantiated by very striking images, surprising, spectacular settings, portraits with a rare expressive and evocative power, were a stimulus interpreted at the time by a reader who - as shown by the long tradition of the illuminated codices, from the Dante of the Musée Condé of Chantilly to the Holkham 48 of the Bodleian Library and manuscript Yates Thompson 36 - never shied away from the challenge posed by the poem, constantly taking up the gauntlet and attributing body and shape to the subjects evoked by its tercets.

Moreover, a story based on the basic metaphor of the journey was inevitably destined to become a series of worlds and landscapes, before it focused on its characters. Grand or real landscapes and their miniatures, apocalyptic or idyllic scenes, animated by wandering or static crowds, one minute groaning, the next purging or pleasure-seeking, and characters sculpted in full relief alongside others destined to remain imprinted forever, thanks to the power of a detail or of even merely a single gesture. Scenes, moods, faces that found, first in the miniaturists and then in the engravers, interpreters capable of capturing and translating into images the enàrgheia of their representation and, therefore, their realism, just as much as their ideal and moral value. The letter and its allegory

In this context, it is no wonder that the Divine Comedy not only intercepted essential themes of the figurative tradition, starting with that of the Novissimi, but that it also directed and influenced their interpretation. By no coincidence, Vasari suggests that Giotto’s Apocalypse of the Santa Chiara monastery in Naples was the product of a collaboration with Dante:

the stories of the Apocalypse […] were, or so it is said, the invention of Dante, as, perhaps, were the highly praised ones of Ascesi too[…]. And even if Dante was dead in this period, he may have discussed it at length when alive, as often happens among friends.

And with Giotto, and in his wake, Orcagna, Signorelli, Michelangelo, all artists who- should their images not speak for themselves- Vasari claims were influenced by Dante. And likewise, it is no surprise that for a period of time, between the 15th and 16th centuries, the theme of the representation and the measurement of the netherworld was the main focus of a series of singular exegetes, starting with Brunelleschi and ending with Galileo.

The result of all this is that no other modern or ancient literary work has ever inspired such a figurative commitment. And not only in terms of quantity: in the papers of the poem- whether illuminated, drawn or engraved - the images have never had a purely ornamental purpose, but have instead always been an integral part of the impact with which the work penetrates, a strenuous, continuous exercise that entails translating the argumentative power and evocative ability of words into images.

Image: Federico Zuccari (copy after), Portrait of Dante, Department of Prints and Drawings, Uffizi

The facts show that the ‘Dante’ - exactly so, as author and work rolled into one - was a recurring figurative theme. Dante as a historical figure was a popular theme from the early 14th century. First in the unmistakeable brush strokes on the walls of the Bargello chapel (it being of little importance whether they were painted personally by his peer and friend Giotto, or someone from his school), then repeated from season to season, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, by the various Nardo di Cione works in the Strozzi Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, by Niccolò Gerini in the Palace of Art of the Guild of Judges and Notaries, by Andrea del Castagno for Villa Carducci in Legnaia, by Benozzo Gozzoli in the San Francesco Museum in Montefalco, by Domenico di Michelino in the world-famous panel of Santa Maria del Fiore, and then again by Justus van Gent, by Giuliano da Maiano in intarsia, by Pietro Lombardo in the marble bas-relief of Ravenna, by Botticelli, Signorelli, and Raphael in his Rooms. The same Raphael who decides to adopt the most significant approaches of both the figurative and critical traditions and who, in the Room of the Segnatura does not hesitate in duplicating Dante’s portrait: in the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament that of Dante the theologian, in the Parnassus that of Dante the poet. A double acknowledgement that remains unique, and that prefigures the future destinies of the character, the same ones that will go on to boost the legend, regardless of the eclipses resulting from the highs and lows of the arguments about language and poetics.

It is true that from then on, many men of letters engaged in those arguments, appeared to set aside any such celebration, paying heed to the reservations expressed by Bembo and his followers, just as it is true that this was followed by an obvious cooling down of the passion for the Divine Comedy and for its author, in favour of the language and sounds of Petrarca, the poet devoted to Laura . But this was not true for Florence, where regardless of the harsh line taken by Machiavelli in his A discourse or dialogue concerning our language, Dante was still seen as the crowning glory of the city’s tradition. A situation expressed most clearly in none other than the field of art, in Vasari’s Six Tuscan poets (now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art Museum), where Dante occupies the same place that would have been assigned to Michelangelo in a hypothetical panel of artists.

Image: Cristofano dell'Altissimo, Portrait of Dante, Uffizi

In fact, the theme, and in the terms in which it was imposed on one side by Raphael and on the other by Vasari, (but Bronzino, Zuccari and Giovanni Stradano are also included in the series), was only suspended. The effects of its suspension were still felt in the seventeenth century, when works regarding Dante like those by Filippo Napoletano, Livio Mehus or Giovanni da San Giovanni were relatively rare, whereas the theme and the subject would become popular again in the next century, with a different emphasis and above all, in a setting outside Italy. This would mark the beginning of a triumphal march that would lead to the romantic apotheosis, so much so that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, a historian like Cesare Balbo could open his Life of Dante Alighieri with no fear of being refuted, stating that “Dante is a large part of the history of Italy”. It was then completely natural for some of the most representative artists of the various cultures and traditions to devote themselves to the celebration of the Dantesque world, from Sir Joshua Reynolds to Füssli, Flaxman, from Blake to Koch, Delacroix, Cornelius and the Nazarenes, Rossetti, with Gustave Doré who would engrave the Dante of the new vulgate in his plates.

The age of Romanticism would be the century that broke down the barriers which had confined Dante’s word to within the limits of literature in Italy and the rest of the world. The political pathos of the poet fanned the flame of patriotism and retaliation against a society and a moral code by then perceived as anachronistic. It is no wonder that figures such as Francesca, Pia or Piccarda, which the exegesis had deemed of relative interest until then, became increasingly more significant in the economy of the poem, to such an extent that they stood alone also in contexts beyond the Dantesque horizon, in art, theatre and popular music. In a climate that leaned towards the general recovery of historical subjects, painters and sculptors made the characters of the Divine Comedy and episodes based on the poet’s biography into the emblems of both the new political and civil and the new moral ideals. Examples of this kind of episode were the Buonconte di Montefeltro by Gabriele Smargiassi, La barca della vita by Domenico Morelli, and new versions of the tales of the heroines mentioned above: Francesca, Pia, Piccarda Donati.

Image: Domenico Petarlini, Dante in exile, Gallery of Modern Art, Pitti Palace

And in the nineteenth century we also witnessed the birth of a new phenomenon, the celebration of the poet’s centenary. And while the centenary of the year 1865 stuck in our memories due to the many monuments erected in the most famous Italian squares, (Piazza Santa Croce in Florence and Piazza dei Signori in Verona), the years 1921 and 1965 were marked most of all by important editorial initiatives (the Works of Dante of the Italian Dante Society in 1921 and the Divine Comedy edited by Giorgio Petrocchi in 1965). It is easy to guess that the centenary we will soon be celebrating shall not be any less fruitful.

Leaving aside commemorations, place names, statues and publications, the praesentia Dantis of the century that had commenced with the fervour of Auguste Rodin in the Porte de l’Enfer (Paris, Musée Rodin) was marked by the launching of figurative programmes that envisaged the systematic illustration of the Divine Comedy. A way of getting closer to the poem that Doré and his publishers had recuperated from ancient tradition (the last illustrated Dante had been that published by Marcolini in 1544) and which saw the participation of Alberto Martini first (who is said to have died however in 1954 without seeing it published, as this only occurred in 2008), and then, more successfully, the Amos Nattini of the Imagini (1923-1941), Salvador Dalì (1964), Renato Guttuso (1969) and Aligi Sassu (1991). This proved the urgency of not only taking up again but also relaunching a dialogue - the artists’ with Dante - which had failed to die out in the space of seven centuries, but instead had been confirmed as a vibrant, necessary interaction.

Image: Emilio Demi, Dante, Piazzale degli Uffizi

Andrea del Castagno

Dante

1448-1449 c.

detached fresco, cm 247 x 153

Uffizi Galleries, Gallery of Statues and Paintings, San Pier Scheraggio

inv. San Marco e Cenacoli n. 167

Our poet, then, was of moderate stature, and after he came to a mature age walked somewhat bent, and his gait was grave and gentle; he was always dressed in good clothes of a fashion appropriate to his years. His face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes rather large than small, his jaws large, and his lower lip protruded over the upper. His complexion was dark, his hair and beard thick, black and curling, and his expression was melancholy and thoughtful.

Boccaccio, Life of Dante, 1362, XX

One of the most ancient portraits of Dante Alighieri that has survived to the present day, this portrayal presents many of the attributes which have characterised the poet’s iconography over the centuries. Dante is wearing a long, loose red over-garment, the academic gown that distinguished the erudite, and men of a high social class. His head is covered by a cap over which he is wearing a fur-lined beret, closed at the back by a short cowl, in line with the fashion of the early fourteenth century. His mature face, marked by wrinkles, is characterised by his slightly aquiline nose and prominent chin. These facial features are confirmed in the description of Dante provided by Giovanni Boccaccio in his Life of Dante, which was possibly the source of inspiration for the painting by Andrea del Castagno, together with the effigies of Alighieri found from the 1300s onwards in the wall decorations of public and private buildings in Florence.

The identification of the poet is confirmed by the half-open book he is holding and by the inscription on the base, which reads: DANTES DI ALEGIERIS FLORETINI.

The wall painting is part of a pictorial cycle depicting a group of illustrious men and women coming from the Carducci-Pandolfini villa in the suburbs of Florence. The wall paintings, which decorated the loggia of the villa, were probably commissioned by the Gonfalonier of Justice Filippo Carducci by 1450. Dante is depicted there together with another two Tuscan poets, Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca. The portrayals of famous characters that often decorated stately homes usually served the dual purpose of inciting the exercising of virtue and celebrating the national glories, with Dante by then considered one of their most illustrious exponents in Florence.

Sandro Botticelli

Altarpiece of San Barnaba

1480-1482 c.

tempera on wood, cm 268 x 280

Uffizi Galleries, Gallery of Statues and Paintings

inv. 1890 n. 8361

O Virgin Mother, Daughter of thy Son, humbler and loftier than any creature,
eternal counsel’s predetermined goal...

(Paradise, XXXIII, 1-3)

The prayer, offered by Saint Bernard to the Holy Virgin, introduces the last canto of the Comedy, which tells of Dante’s meeting with God, marking the end of his journey. The mystical Bernard of Clairvaux who, in the Empyrean, guides the poet in place of Beatrice, sings the Virgin’s praises using oxymorons, (“Virgin Mother”) and antitheses (“daughter of your son, humble and sublime”) that exalt the uniqueness of the mother of God. This is then followed by Bernard’s request for the Virgin to intercede and allow Dante to contemplate God.

Bernard’s prayer is therefore him devotedly praising the Virgin and, at the same time, invoking her to act as intermediary between God and men.

In Sandro Botticelli’s painting, as in the vision of Dante, angels and some saints surround the Virgin, interceding for the devoted like Bernard in the poet’s favour. The large altarpiece was positioned about the main altar of the Church of San Barnaba in Florence, a church founded to celebrate the victory of the Guelphs in Campaldino, in 1289, on the day of the festival of San Barnaba. The Guild of the Doctors and Apothecaries managed the Church, which was looked after by the Augustinian monks. The painting portrays, from left to right: Caterina d’Alessandria, Agostino, Barnaba, Giovanni Battista, Ignazio d’Antiochia and Michele, saints linked not only to those who commissioned the work, but also to the devotion of the city. Botticelli’s painting is proof of the fortune of the Dantesque prayer, which has become part of the repertory of litanies dedicated to the Virgin. The same phrase “Virgin mother, daughter of your son” accompanies the effigy of the Virgin in other 15th century Florentine paintings, such as the Madonna Adoring the Infant Christ by the Master of the Castello Nativity, kept at the city museum of Villa Mimbelli in Livorno.

In the same period during which he painted the altarpiece for the main altar of the church of San Barnaba in Florence, in the early 1480s, Botticelli also tried his hand at illustrating the Divine Comedy, providing the drawings engraved by Baccio Baldini for the printed edition commented by Cristoforo Landino published in 1481. His drawings of the Divine Comedy on parchment, commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici, have also survived, and are now divided between the Vatican Library in Rome and the state museums of Berlin.

Giovanni da San Giovanni 

The Muses with the poets and the philosophers expelled from Parnassus

1635

fresco

Pitti Palace, Treasure of the Grand Dukes, Room of Giovanni da San Giovanni

I swooned away as if I were dying;
and fell, as a dead body falls.

Hell, Canto V, vv 141-142

We’re in Palazzo Pitti, in the first room of the Summer Apartments that the Grand Duke Ferdinando de’Medici decided to dedicate to the patronage of his household with a cycle of frescoes, designed by court librarian Francesco Rondinelli and, commissioned to painter Giovanni Mannozzi, who was named after his home town, becoming Giovanni da San Giovanni. He had begun painting the frescoes in 1635 on the southern wall divided into three lunettes depicting the destruction of classic civilisation, the expulsion of poets and philosophers from Parnassus and their exodus to the new Athens, that is, the Florence of Lorenzo de’Medici. The main scene with the attack by satyrs and harpies, is soaked in the sardonic Tuscan spirit of Mannozzi, undoubtedly the most irreverent and anti-conformist artist of his time. The biographer Filippo Baldinucci conveys the witty sayings, jokes and eccentricities of a man completely dedicated to painting and drawing, but who dressed scruffily as if “his clothes had been thrown on to him from the window”. In the scene, Dante appears in the background and with his back turned, a presence that does not go unnoticed, since the painter captures his catastrophic fall from the stairs of Parnassus in a very vivid image.

Patrizia Naldini

The irony of Giovanni da San Giovanni does not spare the other characters either: Pegasus is bowled over and bitten by grotesque harpies and Homer, blind and staggering, gropes his way along, actually heading outside the painted area. Plato, Aristotle, Sappho and Empedocles are also fleeing from Parnassus, figures taken from Raphael’s School of Athens painting in the Vatican Rooms. The cycle was continued, after Giovanni’s death, in 1636, by other painters called upon to illustrate the apotheosis of Lorenzo de’Medici, patron and founder of the Platonic Academy, and surrounded by its artists, poets and philosophers of the Renaissance. Examples of Florence’s ambition to inherit the Greek and Roman culture can be found in art from the end of the fourteenth century, when Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of the Republic, sponsored a dual project in the city. He commissioned a fresco for the Palazzo della Signoria, which has since been lost, depicting the glories of Greek and Roman antiquity inspired by Petrarca’s “De Viribus Illustribus” and a series of illustrious Florentines, including Dante and Petrarca, taken from the “Liber de origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosisi civibus”; in Santa Maria del Fiore he also sponsored the celebration of the Tuscan glories, including Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, the aim of which was to have Dante’s body repatriated. The latter project failed but was picked up, again by Salutati’s invitation, by the Guild of Judges and Notaries, where one of the oldest portraits of Dante is still hosted in a fresco on the walls of its building. Obviously, there is no iconographic connection between Dante as a proud, illustrious man of letters, characterised between the 14th and 15th centuries, and the Dante of Mannozzi. However, the artist, in his rightful status as author, may have found inspiration from the many lines in the Divine Comedy in which the poet manifests dread, bewilderment and fear when faced with devils and monstrous creatures, such as here with the harpies and satyrs. A fragile Dante who reminds us that overcoming all kinds of obstacles is essential in order to achieve salvation.

Patrizia Naldini

Federico Zuccari

The dark wood (illustration from the Dante historiato da Federigo Zuccaro)

1587 c.

red and black pencil on paper

Uffizi Galleries, Department of Prints and Drawings

inv. 3474

When half-way through the journey of our life
I found that I was in a dark wood,
because the path which led aright was lost.

Hell, I, vv. 1-3

The fate of the Divine Comedy in the 16th century depended on the many publications which, from 1481 onwards - the year of the Florentine publication commented by Cristoforo Landino and accompanied by the engravings of Baccio Baldini- marked the history of the literature and the printing of the period. Bembo’s Terze Rime, published in Venice by Aldo Manuzio (1502), the editions commented by Girolamo Benivieni and by Alessandro Vellutello, respectively published by Giunti in Florence (1506) and by Marcolini in Venice (1544), and then that of Ludovico Dolce (Giolito, Venice 1555) are the premise to the most important late 16th century initiative in Florence. This was when the Crusca Academy, acknowledging the need for a text that was “reduced to be easier to read”, published a new publication of the Divine Comedy which came out in 1595 printed by Domenico Manzani. In parallel, the focus on Dante’s work was also replicated by the artists, leading to the creation of figurative series, notably including those of Giovanni Stradano and Federico Zuccari. During his stay in Spain, Federico Zuccari, who had already tackled the depiction of Hell in the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore between 1576 and 1579, produced a series of 88 panels, collected at the beginning of the 18th century in an album entitled Dante historiato da Federico Zuccari. The sheets, partly drawn in red and black pencil, and partly with brown pen and ink, illustrate the three canticas, interspersing the Dantesque text - not reproduced in its entirety - with short explanatory notes added by the painter himself.

This drawing simultaneously portrays the main episodes of the first canto of Hell and the beginning of Dante’s journey, when he finds himself, lost and frightened, in the dark wood (vv. 1-12) On the left, the poet is in fact clutching on to a tree, while just beside him he sees the hill, lightened by the sun’s rays (vv 13-18). Taking heart, he tries to climb up the rock but encounters the three terrible beasts blocking his way: the leopard, the she-wolf and the lion, respectively symbols of the sins of lust, avarice and pride (vv. 32-33; 54-51).

The central part of the sheet is dedicated to the decisive meeting with Virgil, and even if in the poetic text it comes after the episode of the beasts in chronological order, here it is positioned in full view, to underline the moral meaning of the entire Dantesque epic and the role of “Duke and father” personified by the ancient Latin poet.

The use of the two pencils, red for the figures and black for the landscape, (with the sole exception of the she-wolf, whose dark features probably serve to emphasise its particularly dangerous nature compared to the other two beasts), animates a tidy, easy to interpret composition, in which the painter aims to translate the entire range of emotions transmitted by the Dantesque verses into images. The scene is completed by the small sign on the bottom right with the title: gioventù male incamminata. Zuccari adds this with an educational purpose, referring to a Dante who, unlike in the original text, is represented here as a young man and so becomes the symbol of an age when one is still naive, and exposed to the evils of those sins that distance him from the “path which led aright”. The painter from the Marche region did not create his collection with the intention of publishing it: instead, he made good use of it during his academic lessons, to teach his pupils about its graphic techniques and compliance with moral principles.

Livio Mehus 

Crescenzio Onofri 

Dante and Virgil in Hell

1690 c.

oil on canvas, cm 100.5 x 99

Pitti Palace, Palatine Gallery, Deposits

inv. 1890 n. 5388

"All fearfulness must here be left behind;

all forms of cowardice must here be dead.

We’ve reached the place where, as I said to thee,

thou’lt see the sad folk

who have lost the Good which is the object of the intellect.”

Then, after he had placed his hand in mine

with cheerful face, whence I was comforted,

he led me in among the hidden things.

Hell, Canto III, vv.14 -21

Behold then, coming toward us in a boat,

an agèd man, all white with ancient hair,

who shouted: “Woe to you, ye souls depraved!

Give up all hope of ever seeing Heaven!

I come to take you to the other shore,

into eternal darkness, heat and cold.

Hell, Canto III, vv. 82-87

And he to me: “The eternal fire within

which keeps them burning, maketh them look red,

as thou perceivest in this nether Hell.”

Hell, Canto VIII, vv. 73-75

A large cleft in the dark rock hails the beholder, like a raised curtain, plunging him into the thick of a very lively theatre scene. In the corner at the bottom, Virgil and Dante stop in front of the first, dramatic vision of Hell, narrated in the second part of Canto III. Here, steep rocks of various colours, with disturbing profiles reminiscent of diabolic masks, conceal dwellings populated by monstrous creatures. On the boiling waters of the river Acheron, Charon appears, a terrifying demon with eyes ablaze who is waiting for his charge of damned souls, to ferry them towards the punishment assigned to them. In the background, the spectacular explosion of fire anticipates another moment in the pathway of the two poets, narrated in Canto VIII: the arrival at the city of Dis, whose burning, iron walls, guarded by the devils host the sinners guilty of heresy. The theme of Dante and Virgil’s journey into Hell was adored by those who commissioned paintings in Florence in the 17th century, because the extraordinarily striking text lent itself to be turned into images full of imaginative and grotesque details, such as those seen in the versions of Filippo Napoletano, Francesco Ligozzi, Jacques Callot and others. In this painting, Flemish painter Livio Mehus expressed the qualities of his fast, dense painting style to the full, animated by vivid contrasts of light and colour, relying on the collaboration of Roman landscape painter Crescenzo Onofri, who was also active in the Medici court towards the end of the century.

Filippo Napoletano 

Dante and Virgil in Hell

1618-1620 c.

oil on panel, cm 44 x 67

Uffizi Galleries, Gallery of Statues and Paintings, Deposits

Inv. 1890, n. 1254

“Now, son, at last the town, whose name is Dis, is drawing near with all its host of burdened citizens.”

Hell., VIII, 67-69

And he to me: “The eternal fire within which keeps them burning, maketh them look red, as thou perceivest in this nether Hell.”

Hell, VIII, 73-75

A nocturnal setting, torn apart by fires, illuminates a city that can perhaps be identified as Dis. In the background there is a ruined architecture. Virgil, with Dante, enters slowly form the left and shows him the multitude of damned souls tortured by a variegated repertory of monstrous creatures moving on the ground and in the air. So this is not the representation of an individual episode of the Divine Comedy, but a compendium of episodes of damnation which, among other things, hosts the main demons of Dante’s Hell gathered together on the same stage, as if in a kind of medieval bestiary. These include Charon (Hell, III), Cerberus (Hell, VI), the Centaurs (Hell, XII), the Harpies and the black dogs (Hell, XIII), the Dragons and the Snakes (Hell, XXIV-XXV). The iconography taps into a consolidated repertory, but Filippo Napoletano does not hesitate to add a few original elements. These include the large lobster, almost taken from a Flemish still life painting, or the flying animal skeletons and the skeleton of death on horseback, a unique talent of this painter, acknowledged by his peer Giulio Mancini and sealed by the series of Skeletons engraved for Johanness Faber. The painting reflects the interests accrued by the artist in his Florentine years (1617-1621), in contact with the taste of Cosimo II de’Medici, who was particularly focused on the themes discussed in the Divine Comedy and in particular the Hell cantica, a hotbed of moralising meanings suited to the dictates of the Counter-Reformed Church. A ‘macabre’ vein that Filippo Napoletano willingly expresses here, both by adopting the Nordic models adored by the Grand Duke - in particular Aeneas and the Sibyl by Jan Brueghel the Younger - and by providing an inventive composition that, similarly to the medieval beasts, strikingly illustrates its unique value.

Enrico Pollastrini  

Nello at Pia’s tomb.

1851

oil on canvas, cm 147.5 x 185.5

Pitti Palace, Gallery of Modern Art

inv. Galleria d'Arte Moderna - Catalogo Generale n. 560

“Here he had covered his dear Pia

with earth up to her chin

where even death appeared beautiful in her face,

and he, who was intent on burying her,

almost blown away by the very thought,

that he had witnessed the light of two suns being turned off,

had covered her chaste body, and was torn

by the idea of insulting her face by covering it with earth.

She lay, like a blossoming almond tree

early in the year, on the banks of the river;

The river had swelled, and burst its banks,

and the trunk lies on the flat river bed;

the uprooted trunk is buried

in the mud and all that is visible of the trunk born so bare

are its pronged remains

featuring arid flowers, squalid leaves”.

(Bartolomeo Sestini, Pia de’ Tolomei 1822)

As if on the apron of a drama, Nello reaches Pia’s tomb too late, and she is lying dead in the sepulchre, still open, which provides a striking setting. The positions of the people, the looks and gestures of the bystanders, coherent with the role of each one, are all in tune with the story. The beautiful young woman, dead due to suspicion and lies, provides a motionless counterpoint to the dynamism expressed by the entry of Nello who, shocked, finds himself the protagonist of a tragedy that he himself has caused.

Leopoldo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, commissioned the painting to draw attention to the lands of Maremma he had begun to reclaim. This appointment forms part of the course of action undertaken by the Grand Duke to avert the peril of revolt while democratic ideologies and those of the Risorgimento spread: the celebration of the Italian genius, the launch of public works and the implementation of reforms, were indeed designed to sustain the credibility and popularity of the sovereign. The painting with its “pitiful subject”, an example of historical Romanticism due to the accuracy with which it represents the details of the costumes and settings, and the realistic way in which it present emotions and feelings, moved the public that had the opportunity to admire it in 1852 in the painter’s studio.