FOOTNOTES:
[1] Matilda died in 1115. The name Tessa, the contraction of Contessa, was still, long after her time, sometimes given to Florentine girls. See Perrens, Histoire de Florence, vol. i. p. 126.
[2] Whether by Matilda the great Countess is meant has been eagerly disputed, and many of the best critics—such as Witte and Scartazzini—prefer to find in her one of the ladies of the Vita Nuova. In spite of their pains it seems as if more can be said for the great Matilda than for any other. The one strong argument against her is, that while she died old, in the poem she appears as young.
[3] See note on Inferno xxx. 73.
[4] It might, perhaps, be more correct to say that to some offices the nobles were eligible, but did not elect.
[5] Inf. xiii. 75.
[6] Inf. x. 119.
[7] Inf. xxiii. 66.
[8] Inf. x. 51.
[9] Purg. vi. 144.
[10] Dante sets the Abbot among the traitors in Inferno, and says scornfully of him that his throat was cut at Florence (Inf. xxxii. 119).
[11] Villani throws doubt on the guilt of the Abbot. There were some cases of churchmen being Ghibelines, as for instance that of the Cardinal Ubaldini (Inf. x. 120). Twenty years before the Abbot’s death the General of the Franciscans had been jeered at in the streets of Florence for turning his coat and joining the Emperor. On the other hand, many civilians were to be found among the Guelfs.
[12] Manfred, says John Villani (Cronica, vi. 74 and 75), at first sent only a hundred men. Having by Farinata’s advice been filled with wine before a skirmish in which they were induced to engage, they were easily cut in pieces by the Florentines; and the royal standard was dragged in the dust. The truth of the story matters less than that it was believed in Florence.
[13] Provenzano is found by Dante in Purgatory, which he has been admitted to, in spite of his sins, because of his self-sacrificing devotion to a friend (Purg. xi. 121).
[14] For this good advice he gets a word of praise in Inferno (Inf. xvi. 42).
[15] These mercenaries, though called Germans, were of various races. There were even Greeks and Saracens among them. The mixture corresponded with the motley civilisation of Manfred’s court.
[16] Inf. xxxii. 79.
[17] Inf. x. 93.
[18] Lucera was a fortress which had been peopled with Saracens by Frederick.
[19] Manfred, Purg. iii. 112; Charles, Purg. vii. 113.
[20] Purg. xx. 67.
[21] Purg. iii. 122.
[22] For an account of the constitution and activity of the Parte Guelfa at a later period, see Perrens, Hist. de Florence, vol. iv. p. 482.
[23] Purg. xx. 68.
[24] Parad. xi. 89.
[25] Parad. xvi. 40, etc.
[26] Inf. xxix. 31.
[27] Inf. x. 42. Though Dante was descended from nobles, his rank in Florence was not that of a noble or magnate, but of a commoner.
[28] The month is indicated by Dante himself, Parad. xxii. 110. The year has recently been disputed. For 1265 we have J. Villani and the earliest biographers; and Dante’s own expression at the beginning of the Comedy is in favour of it.
[29] Inf. xxiii. 95.
[30] Inf. xix. 17; Parad. xxv. 9.
[31] Purg. xxx. 55.
[32] Inf. viii. 45, where Virgil says of Dante that blessed was she that bore him, can scarcely be regarded as an exception to this statement.
[33] In 1326, out of a population of ninety thousand, from eight to ten thousand children were being taught to read; and from five to six hundred were being taught grammar and logic in four high schools. There was not in Dante’s time, or till much later, a University in Florence. See J. Villani, xi. 94, and Burckhardt, Cultur der Renaissance, vol. i. p. 76.
[34] For an interesting account of Heresy in Florence from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, see Perrens, Hist. de Florence, vol. i. livre ii. chap. iii.
[35] It opens with Brunetto’s being lost in the forest of Roncesvalles, and there are some other features of resemblance—all on the surface—between his experience and Dante’s.
[36] G. Villani, viii. 10. Latini died in 1294. Villani gives the old scholar a very bad moral character.
[37] Inf. xv. 84.
[38] We may, I think, assume the Vita Nuova to have been published some time between 1291 and 1300; but the dates of Dante’s works are far from being ascertained.
[39] So long as even Italian critics are not agreed as to whether the title means New Life, or Youth, I suppose one is free to take his choice; and it seems most natural to regard it as referring to the new world into which the lover is transported by his passion.
[40] As, indeed, Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, expressly says was the case.
[41] In this adopting a device frequently used by the love-poets of the period.—Witte, Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. p. 312.
[42] The Vita Nuova contains some thirty poems.
[43] See Sir Theodore Martin’s Introduction to his Translation of Vita Nuova, page xxi.
[44] In this matter we must not judge the conduct of Dante by English customs.
[45] Donne, ch’ avete intelletto d’ amore: Ladies that are acquainted well with love. Quoted in Purg. xxiv. 51.
[46] Beatrice died in June 1290, having been born in April 1266.
[47] Purg. xi. 98.
[48] Purg. xxiv. 52.
[49] The date of the Convito is still the subject of controversy, as is that of most of Dante’s works. But it certainly was composed between the Vita Nuova and the Comedy.
There is a remarkable sonnet by Guido Cavalcanti addressed to Dante, reproaching him for the deterioration in his thoughts and habits, and urging him to rid himself of the woman who has bred the trouble. This may refer to the time after the death of Beatrice. See also Purg. xxx. 124.
[50] Convito ii. 13.
[51] Some recent writers set his marriage five years later, and reduce the number of his children to three.
[52] His sister is probably meant by the ‘young and gentle lady, most nearly related to him by blood’ mentioned in the Vita Nuova.
[53] The difference between the Teutonic and Southern conception of marriage must be kept in mind.
[54] He describes the weather on the day of the battle with the exactness of one who had been there (Purg. v. 155).
[55] Leonardo Bruni.
[56] Inf. xxii. 4.
[57] Inf. xxi. 95.
[58] Conv. iii. 9, where he illustrates what he has to say about the nature of vision, by telling that for some time the stars, when he looked at them, seemed lost in a pearly haze.
[59] The Convito was to have consisted of fifteen books. Only four were written.
[60] Wife of Bath’s Tale. In the context he quotes Purg. vii. 121, and takes ideas from the Convito.
[61] Dies to sensual pleasure and is abstracted from all worldly affairs and interests. See Convito iv. 28.
[62] From the last canzone of the Convito.
[63] In the Vita Nuova.
[64] Purg. xxiii. 115, xxiv. 75; Parad. iii. 49.
[65] Purg. xi. 95.
[66] Purg. ii. 91.
[67] Purg. iv. 123.
[68] Sacchetti’s stories of how Dante showed displeasure with the blacksmith and the donkey-driver who murdered his canzoni are interesting only as showing what kind of legends about him were current in the streets of Florence.—Sacchetti, Novelle, cxiv, cxv.
[69] Purg. xii. 101.
[70] Purg. xi. 94:—
‘In painting Cimabue deemed the field
His own, but now on Giotto goes the cry,
Till by his fame the other’s is concealed.’
[71] Giotto is often said to have drawn inspiration from the Comedy; but that Dante, on his side, was indebted to the new school of painting and sculpture appears from many a passage of the Purgatorio.
[72] Serfage had been abolished in 1289. But doubt has been thrown on the authenticity of the deed of abolition. See Perrens, Hist. de Florence, vol. ii. p. 349.
[73] No unusual provision in the industrious Italian cities. Harsh though it may seem, it was probably regarded as a valuable concession to the nobles, for their disaffection appears to have been greatly caused by their uneasiness under disabilities. There is much obscurity on several points. How, for example, came the nobles to be allowed to retain the command of the vast resources of the Parte Guelfa? This made them almost independent of the Commonwealth.
[74] At a later period the Priors were known as the Signory.
[75] Fraticelli, Storia della Vita di Dante, page 112 and note.
[76] It is to be regretted that Ampère in his charming Voyage Dantesque devoted no chapter to San Gemigniano, than which no Tuscan city has more thoroughly preserved its mediæval character. There is no authority for the assertion that Dante was employed on several Florentine embassies. The tendency of his early biographers is to exaggerate his political importance and activity.
[77] Under the date of April 1301 Dante is deputed by the Road Committee to see to the widening, levelling, and general improvement of a street in the suburbs.—Witte, Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. p. 279.
[78] Dante has a word of praise for Giano, at Parad. xvi. 127.
[79] At which Dante fought. See page lxii.
[80] Vieri was called Messer, a title reserved for magnates, knights, and lawyers of a certain rank—notaries and jurisconsults; Dante, for example, never gets it.
[81] Villani acted for some time as an agent abroad of the great business house of Peruzzi.
[82] Inf. iii. 60.
[83] He is ‘the Prince of the modern Pharisees’ (Inf. xxvii. 85); his place is ready for him in hell (Inf. xix. 53); and he is elsewhere frequently referred to. In one great passage Dante seems to relent towards him (Purg. xx. 86).
[84] Albert of Hapsburg was chosen Emperor in 1298, but was never crowned at Rome.
[85] As in the days of Guelf and Ghibeline, so now in those of Blacks and Whites, the common multitude of townsmen belonged to neither party.
[86] An interdict means that priests are to refuse sacred offices to all in the community, who are thus virtually subjected to the minor excommunication.
[87] Guido died soon after his return in 1301. He had suffered in health during his exile. See Inf. x. 63.
[88] Charles of Anjou had lost Sicily at the Sicilian Vespers, 1282.
[89] Purg. xx. 76.
[90] Witte attributes the composition of the De Monarchia to a period before 1301 (Dante-Forschungen, vol. i. Fourth Art.), but the general opinion of critics sets it much later.
[91] Inf. vi. 66, where their expulsion is prophesied.
[92] Dante’s authorship of the letter is now much questioned. The drift of recent inquiries has been rather to lessen than to swell the bulk of materials for his biography.
[93] Parad. xvii. 61.
[94] Purg. xxiv. 82.
[95] See at Purg. xx. 43 Dante’s invective against Philip and the Capets in general.
[96] Henry had come to Italy with the Pope’s approval. He was crowned by the Cardinals who were in Rome as Legates.
[97] Parad. xxx. 136. High in Heaven Dante sees an ample chair with a crown on it, and is told it is reserved for Henry. He is to sit among those who are clothed in white. The date assigned to the action of the Comedy, it will be remembered, is the year 1300.
[98] Inf. xix. 82, where the Gascon Clement is described as a ‘Lawless Pastor from the West.’
[99] The ingenious speculations of Troya (Del Veltro Allegorico di Dante) will always mark a stage in the history of the study of Dante, but as is often the case with books on the subject, his shows a considerable gap between the evidence adduced and the conclusions drawn from it. He would make Dante to have been for many years a satellite of the great Ghibeline chief. Dante’s temper or pride, however we call it, seems to have been such as to preserve him from ever remaining attached for long to any patron.
[100] Inf. x. 81.
[101] The Convito is in Italian, and his words are: ‘wherever this language is spoken.’
[102] His letter to the Florentines and that to the Emperor are dated in 1311, from ‘Near the sources of the Arno’—that is, from the Casentino, where the Guidi of Romena dwelt. If the letter of condolence with the Counts Oberto and Guido of Romena on the death of their uncle is genuine, it has great value for the passage in which he excuses himself for not having come to the funeral:—‘It was not negligence or ingratitude, but the poverty into which I am fallen by reason of my exile. This, like a cruel persecutor, holds me as in a prison-house where I have neither horse nor arms; and though I do all I can to free myself, I have failed as yet.’ The letter has no date. Like the other ten or twelve epistles attributed to Dante, it is in Latin.
[103] There is a splendid passage in praise of this family, Purg. viii. 121. A treaty is on record in which Dante acts as representative of the Malaspini in settling the terms of a peace between them and the Bishop of Luni in October 1306.
[104] The authority for this is Benvenuto of Imola in his comment on the Comedy (Purg. xi.). The portrait of Dante by Giotto, still in Florence, but ruined by modern bungling restoration, is usually believed to have been executed in 1301 or 1302. But with regard to this, see the note at the end of this essay.
[105] It is true that Villani not only says that ‘he went to study at Bologna,’ but also that ‘he went to Paris and many parts of the world’ (Cronica, ix. 136), and that Villani, of all contemporary or nearly contemporary writers, is by far the most worthy of credence. But he proves to be more than once in error regarding Dante; making him, e.g., die in a wrong month and be buried in a wrong church at Ravenna. And the ‘many parts of the world’ shows that here he is dealing in hearsay of the vaguest sort. Nor can much weight be given to Boccaccio when he sends Dante to Bologna and Paris. But Benvenuto of Imola, who lectured on the Comedy at Bologna within fifty years of Dante’s death, says that Dante studied there. It would indeed be strange if he did not, and at more than one period, Bologna being the University nearest Florence. Proof of Dante’s residence in Paris has been found in his familiar reference to the Rue du Fouarre (Parad. x. 137). His graphic description of the coast between Lerici and Turbia (Purg. iii. 49, iv. 25) certainly seems to show a familiarity with the Western as well as the Eastern Rivieras of Genoa. But it scarcely follows that he was on his way to Paris when he visited them.
[106] Inf. xiii. 58.
[107] ‘O ye, who have hitherto been following me in some small craft, ... put not further to sea, lest, losing sight of me, you lose yourselves’ (Parad. ii. 1). But, to tell the truth, Dante is never so weak as a poet as when he is most the philosopher or the theologian. The following list of books more or less known to him is not given as complete:—The Vulgate, beginning with St. Jerome’s Prologue; Aristotle, through the Latin translation then in vogue; Averroes, etc.; Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen; much of the Civil and Canon law; Boethius; Homer only in scraps, through Aristotle, etc.; Virgil, Cicero in part, Livy, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Lucan, and Statius; the works of Brunetto Latini; the poetical literature of Provence, France, and Italy, including the Arthurian Romances—the favourite reading of the Italian nobles, and the tales of Charlemagne and his Peers—equally in favour with the common people. There is little reason to suppose that among the treatises of a scientific and quasi-scientific kind that he fell in with, and of which he was an eager student, were included the works of Roger Bacon. These there was a conspiracy among priests and schoolmen to keep buried. Dante seems to have set little store on ecclesiastical legends of wonder; at least he gives them a wide berth in his works.
[108] In the notes to Fraticelli’s Vita di Dante (Florence 1861) are given copies of documents relating to the property of the Alighieri, and of Dante in particular. In 1343 his son Jacopo, by payment of a small fine, recovered vineyards and farms that had been his father’s.—Notes to Chap. iii. Fraticelli’s admirable Life is now in many respects out of date. He accepts, e.g., Dino Compagni as an authority, and believes in the romantic story of the letter of Fra Ilario.
[109] The details are given by Witte, Dante-Forschungen, vol ii. p. 61. The amount borrowed by Dante and his brother (and a friend) comes to nearly a thousand gold florins. Witte takes this as equivalent to 37,000 francs, i.e. nearly £1500. But the florin being the eighth of an ounce, or about ten shillings’ worth of gold, a thousand florins would be equal only to £500—representing, of course, an immensely greater sum now-a-days.
[110] Purg. viii. 76.
[111] See in Scartazzini, Dante Alighieri, 1879, page 552, extract from the will of her mother Maria Donati, dated February 1314. Many of these Florentine dates are subject to correction, the year being usually counted from Lady-Day. ‘In 1880 a document was discovered which proves Gemma to have been engaged in a law-suit in 1332.—Il Propugnatore, xiii^a. 156,’—Scheffer-Boichorst, Aus Dantes Verbannung, page 213.
[112] Purg. xxiv. 37.
[113] Inf. xxi. 40.
[114] In questo mirifico poeta trovò ampissimo luego la lussuria; e non solamente ne’ giovanili anni, ma ancora ne’ maturi.—Boccaccio, La Vita di Dante. After mentioning that Dante was married, he indulges in a long invective against marriage; confessing, however, that he is ignorant of whether Dante experienced the miseries he describes. His conclusion on the subject is that philosophers should leave marriage to rich fools, to nobles, and to handicraftsmen.
[115] In Purgatory his conscience accuses him of pride, and he already seems to feel the weight of the grievous burden beneath which the proud bend as they purge themselves of their sin (Purg. xiii. 136). Some amount of self-accusation seems to be implied in such passages as Inf., v. 142 and Purg. xxvii. 15, etc.; but too much must not be made of it.
[116] In a letter of a few lines to one of the Marquises Malaspina, written probably in the earlier years of his exile, he tells how his purpose of renouncing ladies’ society and the writing of love-songs had been upset by the view of a lady of marvellous beauty who ‘in all respects answered to his tastes, habits, and circumstances.’ He says he sends with the letter a poem containing a fuller account of his subjection to this new passion. The poem is not found attached to the copy of the letter, but with good reason it is guessed to be the Canzone beginning Amor, dacchè convien, which describes how he was overmastered by a passion born ‘in the heart of the mountains in the valley of that river beside which he had always been the victim of love.’ This points to the Casentino as the scene. He also calls the Canzone his ‘mountain song.’ The passion it expresses may be real, but that he makes the most of it appears from the close, which is occupied by the thought of how the verses will be taken in Florence.
[117] However early the De Monarchia may have been written, it is difficult to think that it can be of a later date than the death of Henry.
[118] The De Vulgari Eloquio is in Latin. Dante’s own Italian is richer and more elastic than that of contemporary writers. Its base is the Tuscan dialect, as refined by the example of the Sicilian poets. His Latin, on the contrary, is I believe regarded as being somewhat barbarous, even for the period.
[119] In his Quæstio de Aqua et Terra. In it he speaks of having been in Mantua. The thesis was maintained in Verona, but of course he may, after a prolonged absence, have returned to that city.
[120] Parad. xvii. 70.
[121] Purg. xviii. 121.
[122] But in urgent need of more of it.—He says of ‘the sublime Cantica, adorned with the title of the Paradiso’, that ‘illam sub præsenti epistola, tamquam sub epigrammate proprio dedicatam, vobis adscribo, vobis offero, vobis denique recommendo.’ But it may be questioned if this involves that the Cantica was already finished.
[123] As, for instance, Herr Scheffer-Boichorst in his Aus Dantes Verbannung, 1882.
[124] The Traversari (Purg. xiv. 107). Guido’s wife was of the Bagnacavalli (Purg. xiv. 115). The only mention of the Polenta family, apart from that of Francesca, is at Inf. xxvii. 41.
[125] In 1350 a sum of ten gold florins was sent from Florence by the hands of Boccaccio to Beatrice, daughter of Dante; she being then a nun at Ravenna.
[126] The embassy to Venice is mentioned by Villani, and there was a treaty concluded in 1321 between the Republic and Guido. But Dante’s name does not appear in it among those of the envoys from Ravenna. A letter, probably apocryphal, to Guido from Dante in Venice is dated 1314. If Dante, as is maintained by some writers, was engaged in tuition while in Ravenna, it is to be feared that his pupils would find in him an impatient master.
[127] Not that Dante ever mentions these any more than a hundred other churches in which he must have spent thoughtful hours.
[128] Purg. xxviii. 20.
[129] A certain Cecco d’Ascoli stuck to him like a bur, charging him, among other things, with lust, and a want of religious faith which would one day secure him a place in his own Inferno. Cecco was himself burned in Florence, in 1327, for making too much of evil spirits, and holding that human actions are necessarily affected by the position of the stars. He had been at one time a professor of astronomy.
[130] Gabriel Rossetti, Comment on the Divina Commedia, 1826, and Aroux, Dante, Hérétique, Révolutionnaire et Socialiste, 1854.
[131] Scartazzini, Dante Alighieri, Seine Zeit, etc., 1879, page 268.
[132] Parad. xxiv. 86.
[133] Parad. xxiv. 145.
[134] Inf. xxvii. 101; Purg. iii. 118.
[135] Parad. xxiv. 91.
[136] Parad. xxiv. 106.
[137] Inf. x. and xxviii. There is no place in Purgatory where those who in their lives had once held heretical opinions are purified of the sin; leaving us to infer that it could be repented of in the world so as to obliterate the stain. See also Parad. iv. 67.
[138] Purg. i. 71.
[139] Purg. xxvii. 139.
[140] Purg. xix. 134.
[141] Parad. xxv. 1.
GIOTTO’S PORTRAIT OF DANTE.[142]
Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters, tells that in his day the portrait of Dante by Giotto was still to be seen in the chapel of the Podesta’s palace in Florence. Writers of an earlier date had already drawn attention to this work.[143] But in the course of an age when Italians cared little for Dante, and less for Giotto, it was allowed to be buried out of sight; and when at length there came a revival of esteem for these great men, the alterations in the interior arrangement of the palace were found to have been so sweeping that it was even uncertain which out of many chambers had formerly served as the chapel. Twenty years after a fruitless attempt had been made to discover whether or not the portrait was still in existence, Signor Aubrey Bezzi, encouraged by Mr. Wilde and Mr. Kirkup, took the first step in a search (1839) which was to end by restoring to the world what is certainly the most interesting of all portraits, if account be taken of its beauty, as well as of who was its author and who its subject.
On the removal from it of a layer of lime, one of the end walls of what had been the chapel was found to be covered by a fresco painting, evidently the work of Giotto, and representing a Paradise—the subject in which Dante’s portrait was known to occur. As is usual in such works, from the time of Giotto downwards, the subject is treated so as to allow of the free introduction of contemporary personages. Among these was a figure in a red gown, which there was no difficulty in recognising as the portrait of Dante. It shows him younger and with a sweeter expression than does Raphael’s Dante, or Masaccio’s,[144] or that in the Cathedral of Florence,[145] or that of the mask said to have been taken after his death. But to all of them it bears a strong resemblance.
The question of when this portrait was painted will easily be seen to be one of much importance in connection with Dante’s biography. The fresco it belongs to is found to contain a cardinal, and a young man, who, because he wears his hair long and has a coronet set on his cap, is known to be meant for a French prince.[146] If, as is usually assumed, this prince is Charles of Valois, then the date of the event celebrated in the fresco is 1301 or 1302. With regard to when the work was executed, Messrs Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their valuable book, say as follows:[147]—
‘All inferences to be deduced from the subject and form of these frescos point to the date of 1301-2. It may be inquired whether they were executed by Giotto at the time, and this inquiry can only be satisfied approximatively. It may be inferred that Dante’s portrait would hardly have been introduced into a picture so conspicuously visible as this, had not the poet at the time been influent in Florence.... Dante’s age in the fresco corresponds with the date of 1302, and is that of a man of thirty-five. He had himself enjoyed the highest office of Florence from June to August 1300.[148] In the fresco he does not wear the dress of the “Priori,” but he holds in the ranks of those near Charles of Valois an honourable place. It may be presumed that the frescos were executed previous[149] to Dante’s exile, and this view is confirmed by the technical and artistic progress which they reveal. They exhibit, indeed, the master in a higher sphere of development than at Assisi and Rome.’
This account of the subject of the work and the probable date of its execution may, I think, be accepted as containing all that is to be said in favour of the current opinion on the matter. That writer after writer has adopted that opinion without a sign of doubt as to its credibility must surely have arisen from failure to observe the insuperable difficulties it presents.
Both Charles of Valois and the Cardinal Acquasparta were in Florence during part of the winter of 1301-1302; but the circumstances under which they were there make it highly improbable that the Commonwealth was anxious to do them honour beyond granting them the outward show of respect which it would have been dangerous to refuse. Earlier in the year 1301 the Cardinal Acquasparta, having failed in gaining the object which brought him to Florence, had, as it were, shaken the dust of the city from off his feet and left the people of it under interdict. While Charles of Valois was in Florence the Cardinal returned to make a second attempt to reconcile the opposing parties, failed a second time, and again left the city under an interdict—if indeed the first had ever been raised. On the occasion of his first visit, the Whites, who were then in power, would have none of his counsels; on his second, the Blacks in their turn despised them.[150] There would therefore have been something almost satirical in the compliment, had the Commonwealth resolved to give him a place in a triumphal picture.
As for Charles of Valois, though much was expected from an alliance with him while he was still at a distance, the very party that invited his presence was soon disgusted with him owing to his faithlessness and greed. The earlier part of his stay was disturbed by pillage and bloodshed. Nor is it easy to imagine how, at any time during his residence of five months, the leading citizens could have either the time or the wish to arrange for honouring him in a fashion he was not the man to care for. His one craving was for money, and still more money; and any leisure the members of public bodies had to spare from giving heed to their own interests and securing vengeance upon their opponents, was devoted to holding the common purse shut as tightly as they could against their avaricious Pacificator. When he at last delivered the city from his presence no one would have the heart to revive the memory of his disastrous visit.
But if, in all this confusion of Florentine affairs, Giotto did receive a commission to paint in the palace of the Podesta, yet it remains incredible that he should have been suffered to assign to Dante, of all men, a place of honour in the picture. No citizen had more stubbornly opposed the policy which brought Charles of Valois to Florence, and that Charles was in the city was reason enough for Dante to keep out of it. In his absence, he was sentenced in January 1302 to pay a ruinously heavy fine, and in the following March he was condemned to be put to death if ever he was caught. On fuller acquaintance his fellow-citizens liked the Frenchman as little as he, but this had no effect in softening their dislike or removing their fear of Dante. We may be sure that any friends he may still have had in Florence, as their influence could not protect his goods from confiscation or him from banishment, would hardly care to risk their own safety by urging, while his condemnation was still fresh, the admission of his portrait among those of illustrious Florentines.[151] It is true that there have been instances of great artists having reached so high a pitch of fame as to be able to dictate terms to patrons, however exalted. In his later years Giotto could perhaps have made such a point a matter of treaty with his employers, but in 1301 he was still young,[152] and great although his fame already was, he could scarcely have ventured to insist on the Republic’s confessing its injustice to his friend; as it would have done had it consented that Dante, newly driven into exile, should obtain a place of honour in a work painted at the public cost.
These considerations seem to make it highly improbable that Giotto’s wall-painting was meant to do honour to Charles of Valois and the Cardinal Acquasparta. But if it should still be held that it was painted in 1302, we must either cease to believe, in spite of all that Vasari and the others say, that the portrait is meant for Dante; or else confess it to be inexplicable how it got there. A way out of the difficulty begins to open up as soon as we allow ourselves some latitude in speculating as to when Giotto may have painted the fresco. The order in which that artist’s works were produced is very imperfectly settled; and it may easily be that the position in Vasari’s pages of the mention made by him of this fresco has given rise to a misunderstanding regarding the date of it. He speaks of it at the very beginning of his Life of Giotto. But this he does because he needs an illustration of what he has been saying in his opening sentences about the advance that painter made on Cimabue. Only after making mention of Dante’s portrait does he begin his chronological list of Giotto’s works; to the portrait he never returns, and so, as far as Vasari is concerned, it is without a date. Judging of it by means of Mr. Kirkup’s careful and beautiful sketch—and unfortunately we have now no other means of knowing what the original was like—it may safely be asserted to be in Giotto’s ripest style.[153] Everything considered, it is therefore allowable to search the Florentine chronicles lower down for an event more likely to be the subject of Giotto’s fresco than that usually fixed upon.
We read in John Villani that in the middle of the year 1326 the Cardinal Gianni Orsini came to Florence as Papal Legate and Pacificator of Tuscany. The city was greatly pleased at his coming, and as an earnest of gratitude for his services presented him with a cup containing a thousand florins.[154] A month later there arrived Charles Duke of Calabria, the eldest son of King Robert of Naples, and great-grandson of Charles of Anjou. He came as Protector of the Commonwealth, which office—an extraordinary one, and with a great salary attached to it—he had been elected to hold for five years. Never before had a spectacle like that of his entry been offered to Florence. Villani gives a long list of the barons who rode in his train, and tells that in his squadrons of men-at-arms there were no fewer than two hundred knights. The chronicler pauses to bid the reader note how great an enterprise his fellow-citizens had shown in bringing to sojourn among them, and in their interest, not only such a powerful lord as the Duke of Calabria was, but a Papal Legate as well. Italy counted it a great thing, he says, and he deems that the whole world ought to know of it.[155] Charles took up his abode in the Podesta’s palace. He appears to have gained a better place in the hearts of the Florentines than what they were used to give to strangers and princes. When a son was born to him, all the city rejoiced, and it mourned with him when, in a few weeks, he lost the child. After seventeen months’ experience of his rule the citizens were sorry to lose him, and bade him a farewell as hearty as their welcome had been. To some of them, it is true, the policy seemed a dangerous one which bore even the appearance of subjecting the Republic to the Royal House of Naples; and some of them could have wished that he ‘had shown more vigour in civil and military affairs. But he was a gentle lord, popular with the townsfolk, and in the course of his residence he greatly improved the condition of things in Florence, and brought to a close many feuds.’[156] They felt that the nine hundred thousand gold florins spent on him and his men had, on the whole, been well laid out.
One detail of the Duke’s personal appearance deserves remark. We have seen that the prince in the fresco has long hair. John Villani had known the Duke well by sight, and when he comes to record his death and describe what kind of man he was to look upon, he specially says that ‘he wore his hair loose.’[157]
A subject worthy of Giotto’s pencil, and one likely to be offered to him if he was then in Florence, we have therefore found in this visit of the Duke and the Cardinal. But that Giotto was in Florence at that time is certain. He painted a portrait[158] of the Duke in the Palace of the Signory; and through that prince, as Vasari tells, he was invited by King Robert to go down to work in Naples. All this, in the absence of evidence of any value in favour of another date, makes it, at the very least, highly probable that the fresco was a work of 1326 or 1327.
In 1326 Dante had been dead for five years. The grudge his fellow-townsmen had nourished against him for so long was now worn out. We know that very soon after his death Florence began to be proud of him; and even such of his old enemies as still survived would be willing that Giotto should set him in a place of honour among the great Florentines who help to fill the fresco of the Paradise. That he was already dead would be no hindrance to his finding room alongside of Charles of Calabria; for the age was wisely tolerant of such anachronisms.[159] Had Dante been still living the painter would have been less at liberty to create, out of the records he doubtless possessed of the features of the friend who had paid him beforehand with one immortal line, the face which, as we look into it, we feel to be a glorified transcript of what it was in the flesh. It is the face of one who has wellnigh forgotten his earthly life, instead of having the worst of it still before him; of one who, from that troubled Italy which like his own Sapia he knew but as a pilgrim, has passed to the ‘true city,’ of which he remains for evermore a citizen—the city faintly imaged by Giotto upon the chapel wall.