The magnificent Naples Bust is seemingly, like the so-called “Death Mask” itself, the creation of some abnormally gifted artist, who derived his inspiration, perhaps indirectly, through the Palatine Miniature (No. 320)[105] from the Bargello portrait to which we have already referred. In vain, therefore, does its splendid physiognomy, completely human, give such promise of a sense of humour as a face in repose can be expected to give. Nor does it matter for our purpose that the “Ritratto brutto” (as the Riccardian picture—attached to MS. 1040—is justly styled by some distinguished Florentines) would suggest the bare possibility rather than the probability of a sense of humour; for that work of Art (if it may be so called), is probably derived, like the famous Torrigiani Mask, from the Naples Bust.
The one probably genuine contemporary portrait, the Bargello Fresco, which a merciful criticism still allows us to attribute to Giotto, is only preserved in the drawings of Kirkup and Faltoni. In these, one window of the soul, the eye, is wanting, and there is considerable difference between the two reproductions of that most essential feature, the mouth; where Kirkup has much more of the conventional “Cupid’s Bow.”[106] The most that can be said here is what we said of the Naples Bust, that it certainly leaves room for a play of humour, restrained and dignified.
When we pass from portraiture to written record, we have but little material that is really à propos in the early biographers of Dante. Boccaccio, after pourtraying his character and features says, “his expression was ever melancholy and thoughtful”—“nella faccia sempre malinconico e pensoso” (Vita, § 8), but goes on to describe him as “smiling a little”—“sorridendo alquanto” (ib.), when he overheard the gossips of Verona commenting on the crisped hair and darkened complexion of the man who “goes down to Hell and returns at will to bring back word of those below.” Later on in his biography he draws out with evident relish the power of the poet’s sarcastic satire: “with a fine resourcefulness of invention,” says Boccaccio (§ 17), “he fixes his fangs on the vices of many yet alive and lashes the vices of many that have passed away”—“con invenzione acerbissima morde le colpe di molti viventi e quelle de’ preteriti castiga.” And speaking, in an earlier passage, of his courtesy in intercourse with others[107]—“più che alcun altro cortese e civile”—he takes something of the edge off Giovanni Villani’s description of a man “somewhat haughty, reserved and disdainful, and after the fashion of a philosopher, careless of graces and not easy in his intercourse with laymen.”[108] Yet we feel all the time that Villani’s description is, speaking broadly, the more convincing; and are relieved when we realise that it is the outwardly and obviously genial temperament rather than the saving sense of humour that the Florentine historian would deny to his great contemporary.
Next, before we turn to the testimony of Dante’s own works, we may refer briefly to the stories told of him; for if none of these be incontrovertibly authentic, and not a few of them be comparatively late in origin, their cumulative evidence should be of some value, at any rate in suggesting what his own countrymen of succeeding generations regarded as compatible with the Poet’s temperament.[109]
We may dismiss, if we will, as apocryphal, the tale of Dante’s conversation with the fish at the Venetian Doge’s banquet, and of the smearing of his court dress at King Robert’s feast, we may reject, perhaps, with more hesitation and regret, Sacchetti’s stories of the harmonious but offending blacksmith and the donkey-driver who farced Dante’s songs with an interpolated Arrhi! We may relinquish the pun on Can Grande’s name, while retaining Petrarca’s story (of which Michele Savonarola’s is possibly a “doublet”) wherein Dante administers a deserved rebuke to Can Grande and his court for their preference of a buffoon to a poet. But even the rejected legends add their quota of testimony to the general and traditional belief that the Divino Poeta could unbend, and was capable of making a joke.
And there is a certain residuum—some would say larger, some smaller—of anecdotes that may be believed to contain a nucleus of truth.
There is to me a convincing ring about the comment of the Anonimo Fiorentino on Purg. iv. 106. When Belacqua makes excuses for his laziness on the ground of the Aristotelian dictum that “by repose and quiet mind the mind attains to wisdom,” Dante retorts: “Certainly, if repose will make a man wise, you ought to be the wisest man on earth!”
A like readiness of wit, in a moment where all depended on readiness, is evinced in the story of his reply to the Florentine envoy who was sent to Porciano to demand his extradition. “Is Dante Alighieri still at Porciano?” asked the messenger who met the fore-warned exile on the road, in the act of escaping. “When I was there, he was there,” was the non-self-committing response: “quand io era, v’ era’.”[110] The stories told of Dante, if they do not suggest a genial and convivial temperament, do suggest a ready and caustic wit. But it is time to turn to Dante’s own works, and taste for ourselves.
The Divina Commedia is the criterion by which most would judge him, and on this we shall spend the bulk of the space at our disposal; but no discussion of this or any other aspect of Dante’s literary genius can afford to neglect the field of his minor works, which are, in this particular case, of not a little importance. The Convivio (if we may anticipate) supplies us, among other things, with Dante’s own idea of what laughter should be; and the De Vulgari Eloquentia furnishes a practical illustration of his treatment of a subject like patois which lends itself to humorous handling even in a serious treatise.
These three works not only cover a large proportion of Dante’s total literary remains, but they are also representative of his three chief styles of writing: Poetry, Italian Prose, and Latin Prose.