Painted portrait of Dante in profile, in a red hood and laurel wreath, against an oxblood red ground

Portraits · Poets · X of XIV

Dante Alighieri

c. 1265–1321 · Poet

…your art, as far as it can, follows her, as the scholar does his master; so that your art is, as it were, the grandchild of the Deity.

che l'arte vostra quella, quanto puote, / segue, come il maestro fa il discente, / sì che vostr'arte a Dio quasi è nipote.

Dante Alighieri · Virgil speaking, Inferno XI, c. 1308–20
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In canto XI of the Inferno, Dante's guide Virgil explains where human work stands. Nature follows the divine mind; human art follows nature, as far as it can, the way a pupil follows a master. So art is, in a sense, God's grandchild.

Dante wrote the Comedy in exile, in the early fourteenth century.

Inferno XI.103–105, Virgil speaking to Dante. The Inferno of Dante Alighieri, Italian text ed. H. Oelsner, tr. J. A. Carlyle, revised (Temple Classics; London: J. M. Dent, 4th ed., 1903), pp. 118 (Italian) and 119 (English).

The originals

Profile portrait of Dante in a red hood and cap crowned with laurel
The likenessPAINTED BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI · c. 1495Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (painter died 1510; Commons tags it PD). Private collection, Geneva.
A printed page of Italian verse headed Comincia la Comedia di Dante, with a decorated initial N
The Comedy, Foligno, 1472The opening page of the first printed edition of the Comedy, made in Foligno in 1472, a century and a half after his death.La Commedia, first printed edition (Foligno: Johann Numeister, 1472), opening of the Inferno. BEIC digital library, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.