Sample Pages - Reading Dante with Images: A Visual Lectura Dantis by Brepols

READING DANTE WITH IMAGES a visual lectura dantis

a visual lectura dantis

HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS

Reading_Dante_Jacket_20210915_00.indd 1-7

EDITED BY

Matthew Collins

Matthew Collins holds a PhD from Harvard University’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. His 2018 dissertation was on the early printed illustrations of Dante’s Commedia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He has taught at Harvard and at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and a Lauro De Bosis Postdoctoral Fellow.

Reading dante with images

Reading Dante with Images contains an unprecedented meeting of two major traditions, both of which are forms of careful engagement with Dante’s Commedia: the Lectura Dantis and the longstanding practice of illustrating this work. The Lectura Dantis, initiated by Giovanni Boccaccio in the fourteenth century, consists of a canto-by-canto study of Dante’s poem. The history of Commedia illustration has similarly deep roots, as illuminated manuscripts of the text began to appear within decades of the work’s completion in 1321. While both of these traditions have continued with limited interruption for more than six hundred years, they have never been directly brought together. In this volume, scholars have worked with single cantos of their choice, exploring not just their selected text but also its illustrations and other relevant imagery, thus forming multifaceted visual-textual readings. In addition to enlivening the tradition of the Lectura Dantis and revisiting the illustration history of the poem from new perspectives, these chapters present a variety of approaches to studying the Commedia, and literary works more broadly, by rigorously inquiring into words in juxtaposition with images that these words have inspired. The final three chapters of this volume are by living artists who illustrated Dante’s poem, complementing scholarly studies with creative perspectives.

Matthew Collins

Cover image: Kateřina Machytková, Center of Existence, 2016

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Reading Dante with Images A Visual Lectura Dantis

edited by matthew collins

HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS

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HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS An Imprint of Brepols Publishers London/Turnhout

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–1–912554–50–8 © 2021, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Harvey Miller Publishers D/2021/0095/136 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

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Table of Contents

MATTHEW COLLINS ......................................................................................................................... 7

Experimenting with Traditions

K.P. CLARKE ...................................................................................................................................... 33 Inferno 1: Openings and Beginnings GIANNI PITTIGLIO .......................................................................................................................... 55

Inferno 6: Una fiera crudele e tanto diversa. Cerberus Illustrated in the Early Manuscripts and Incunabula of the Divine Comedy

MICHAEL PAPIO .............................................................................................................................. 79

Inferno 10: Heretics in Fiery Tombs

PETER S. HAWKINS ........................................................................................................................ 117

Inferno 26: Tongues on Fire

CHRISTIAN Y. DUPONT ............................................................................................................... 139

Inferno 33: The Power of Grief

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TABL E O F CO NTEN TS

SILVIA ARGURIO ............................................................................................................................ 173

Purgatorio 2: The Angel on the Water

DARIO DEL PUPPO ........................................................................................................................ 205

Purgatorio 5: An Experimental Visual Interpretation

ARIELLE SAIBER ............................................................................................................................ 235

Paradiso 28: Entruthing the Image

SANDOW BIRK ............................................................................................................................... 309

Accidental Dantista: Los Angeles is Not Hell, New York is Not Paradise

ROBERT BRINKERHOFF ............................................................................................................... 335

Una selva oscura: Midlife and Metaphor

BARRY MOSER ................................................................................................................................ 373

On Illustrating the Divine Comedy

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Acknowledgements

I cannot precisely recall the moment when the idea behind this volume took shape—the central component of which is, simply stated, the merging of two traditions of engagement with Dante’s work, both dating back to the fourteenth century: the Lectura Dantis and visual responses to the text of the Commedia. Because much of my research has been focused on the illustrations of this poem, connecting these two dots was almost natural to me. What I can quite specifically remember is the occasion when I first mentioned the concept to someone. It was during a visit to South Bend in early 2017 that I brought it up, in passing, to Zyg Baranski—and his immediate, positive reaction confirmed for me that it was worth pursuing when the opportunity arose. Not so long afterward, in 2018, Harvard’s Lauro De Bosis fund provided support for a conference that would lay the initial foundations for this volume; Lino Pertile co-presented the proposal with me to the De Bosis committee. With the conference in place, steps toward a test run of the concept, to potentially develop further into a volume, were underway. It was during conference planning that the idea took shape of a complementary section bearing creative perspectives. In addition to Rob Brinkerhoff’s talk, developed into his chapter in this volume, Robert Pinsky spoke about Michael Mazur’s illustrations that accompanied his translation of Inferno, alongside slides of Michael’s work that he prepared together with Gail Mazur. These two talks at the conclusion of that event, which took place on the Harvard campus in April of 2019, affirmed the fruitful discursive exchange between dantisti, engaging in this particular way with the visual tradition, and artists who had responded with direct creativity to the Commedia. (A sad side note of remembrance: Laurence Hooper had planned to be among the speakers at the conference—we missed his voice then, and we continue to miss it.) With increasingly welldefined indications of a worthwhile publication, I was soon in touch with Johan Van Der Beke who became an invaluable source of insight and guidance while this undertaking moved into its book stage. Peter Hawkins, Luca Marcozzi, Dario Del Puppo and (yes, again) Zyg Baranski were especially generous in shepherding aspects of this volume during critical stages of its formation. In addition to support from the De Bosis fund, UMass Amherst via Michael Papio was also very kind in its support for this volume, particularly as relates to obtaining image rights. My wife, Anastasiya, was a consistent source of encouragement throughout. Thank you all.

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CO L L IN S

from definitively merging these two traditions, to which the contributions in this volume attest, it is appropriate to briefly sketch each of them separately in their distinctive trajectories, beginning with what may be referred to as a history of the perception of Commedia illustrations as commentary. I will present this history in a reverse chronological order—from latest to earliest—gesturing to the fact that there has been reemerging interest along these lines within the last several decades, but that these interests in fact have longstanding roots. Certain recent studies have nicely defined, in some of the earliest illustrations of the Commedia, a specific engagement with commentary—and even an inherent quality of commentary itself. A noteworthy example of this line of observation occurs in Lucia Battaglia Ricci’s inquiry into the mid-Trecento MS 597 in the Musée Conde in Chantilly, in which she refers to the miniatures collectively as a “complex exegetical system.”1 As she observes, some of the Chantilly miniatures are direct representations of the content of Guido da Pisa’s commentary on the poem that is included in this manuscript, rather than representations of the text of the poem proper. For example, the first full miniature in the MS 597 is not a rendering of anything described in the Commedia (fig. 1),2 but instead, a representation of the scene in the book of Daniel in which Balthazar sees a hand writing on the wall. Why would the illuminator choose to represent a scene from this different text? The answer is revealing: at the start of his gloss, Guido da Pisa proposes a certain comparison between Dante’s writing of the Commedia and the hand in Daniel chapter five. In this image, which is quite literally the illustration of a gloss, we have an exemplary case of early illustrations of Dante’s poem engaging directly with the commentary tradition—and this point is made evident, in turn, through an exemplary study that teases out the intersection of interpretation and illustration in the manuscript. In another relatively recent study, Karl Fugelso reflected on the place of miniaturists in rendering the Commedia in light of the distinct forms of writerly participation enumerated in Bonaventure’s commentary on Peter Lombard’s Books of Sentences—that is, within the fourfold scheme of the auctor (who writes original work), the commentator (who writes principally about the work of others), the compilator Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 597, 31r (who arranges others’ writings), and the scriptor (who copies

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EXP ERIMENTING WITH TRADITIO N S

with the Della Scala family in this northern Italian city, is indeed accounted for in the text, but Beatrice’s accompanying presence is not. Perhaps this image, as well as the Inferno 2 illustration, may be meant to gesture toward her perceived role as a silent “apparitional” force in the sense of being present behind the scenes. In general terms, the second canto of Inferno could support such a reading; the canto notably consists of Virgil telling Dante that Beatrice had interceded on his behalf while in his lost state. The 1487 rendering of Inferno 2 featuring Dante in direct conversation with Beatrice was also copied in two very closely related sets of woodcut illustrations that were printed in Venice in 1491: Benali and Capcasa’s aforementioned March edition and Cremonese’s November edition (fig. 9). Whether the repetition of Dante speaking to Beatrice in these printings could be taken as critical agreement with potentially intended implications or simply as uncritical copying, by including this detail once more the later artists advanced a visual claim. However, among early printed editions of this work, there are also occasions when a later artist who largely followed the designs of a predecessor made a tweak in order to more accurately represent the passage. In a subsequent woodcut printed in Bernardino Stagnino’s 1512 edition (fig. 10), which yet again drew heavily from its predecessors, this detail was altered; only Virgil is represented in conversation with Beatrice. Accepting that images make paratextual arguments, one might well regard this as a case of visual editing—that is, a correction of textually-based content. The more likely explanation for the 1487 illustration and its visual descendants is that of a simple error that was somewhat quickly adjusted within the relevant direct genealogy of illustrations.34 And yet, even the probable mistake becomes a cause for reflection on the text, akin in a way to a bit of misinformation within a 6 Inferno 2, in Dante Alighieri, commentary. At the very least, it becomes necessary to revisit the passage Commedia, Brescia: Boninus de Boninis, de Ragusia, 1487 to assure that the presently held understanding of the text is not amiss; one 7 Inferno 2, in Dante Alighieri, may even begin to ponder whether an artist may have misread something Commedia, Florence: Nicolaus Laurentii, 30 August 1481 that led to a given misrepresentation. In a certain sense, any image intending

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CO L L IN S

Paradiso 17, in Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Venice: Bernardinus Benalius and Matteo Capcasa (di Codeca), March 1491

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INFERN O 6

still interpret Cerberus as a ferocious shaggy dog, but anthropomorphically standing on two legs, taking up the ancient motif of the cynocephalus. This is an iconographic typology that dates back to the Egyptian Anubis and to the Byzantine Saint Christopher Cynocephal,6 as well as the cynocephaluses of the Wonders of the East, which imaginatively recounted the journeys to faraway Asia, inspiring many strange creatures in miniatures and in medieval apocalyptic sculptures, such as in the famous portal lunette of the Vézelay basilica (1125–1130) (figs. 5a-b). These texts, among others, took up the cynocephalus as an “imaginative creature of Greek antiquity,” continuing a literary genre that emerged from the treatise on India written by Ctesias of Cnidus in the fourth century BC, influenced by Pliny’s Naturalis Historia and Solinus’ Collectanea rerum memorabilium, which were translated from Greek in the fourth century and were widespread from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.7 Among illuminated masterpieces that should be mentioned is the Livre des merveilles, created for John of Burgundy between 1410 and 1412 (Paris, BnF, MS 2810), a collation of multiple texts in which the cynocephaluses are represented both in the part of the manuscript related to the journey of Marco Polo, as inhabitants of the Andaman Islands at folio 76v, and in the journey of Odorico from Pordenone, as inhabitants of the Nicobare Islands at f. 106r8 (fig. 5c). Concerning the Commedia, however, the first example of this type of cynocephalus is the one placed at folio 5v of MS It. 1 in Budapest (fig. 6), exceptionally featuring a bipedal

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PAP IO

Gustave Doré, Inferno 10, woodcut, 1861

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INFERN O 10

and his portrayal of the heretics must surely be one of the most moving and convincing of them all. Farinata’s posture does not suggest his disdain for Hell, however. Instead, Doré shows him alone and almost zombie-like in his sinful distress. The strength of the scene lies not in a threatening appearance of a soldier still concerned with worldly affairs, but in the sorrow he evinces as he lifts himself up in his glowing sarcophagus. The compassion that characterized other episodes of Inferno, such as in the canto of the lustful, is blotted out among the artist’s heretics. Doré shows a languishing shade who, in his leanness, reminds the viewer of the decaying cadavers in actual tombs. His head is tilted backwards, and his arms are lowered, while the flames at his feet cast a long shadow upon the tombstone behind him. The iconic nature of Doré’s engraving encouraged its later reuse, even in unexpected places. The movie poster for Henry Otto’s 1924 film entitled Dante’s Inferno (fig. 22) featured a version of it,46 and its influence can also be felt in Carlo Fontana’s marble entitled “Farinata” (1901–1903). It likewise informs Anton Maria Mucchi-Vignoli’s illustration (fig. 23) for the Alinari Commedia (in which Farinata’s shadow itself suggests the Ghibelline escutcheon) and Barry Moser’s illustration (fig. 24) made in preparation for the 1980 University of California Press edition of the Comedy. Only a couple of years after Doré’s work appeared, Francesco De Sanctis would publish his massively influential article entitled “Il Farinata di Dante” (“Dante’s Farinata”). In it, he emphasizes not the sinner but the larger-than-life hero who quite literally looks down 22 Henry Otto, Dante’s Inferno, film poster, on the pilgrim. Describing the victorious general in his tomb, De 1924 Sanctis writes: 23

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Anton Maria Mucchi-Vignoli, Inferno 10, engraving, 1902

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108

PAP IO

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125

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130

H AWKINS

Sandow Birk, Inferno 14, lithograph, 2004

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144

DU P O NT

The woodcut images that illustrate each canto of the Commedia in the edition printed in Venice in 1491 by Pietro Cremonese (fig. 4) are typical in design and execution for the period. Square in shape, they were designed to fill the width of a column of text in a two-column page layout that includes both the text of the poem and a surrounding commentary, in this case the discursive vernacular commentary composed by Cristoforo Landino. Some images are wider than others depending on whether they are placed in the narrow column of text or wider column of commentary. Regardless, in each case they appear at the beginning of the canto, and thus function as a kind of visual index or summary of the principal events that transpire in the succeeding verses. Many images may be classified as Inferno 33, in Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Venice: Bernardinus polyscenic, for they contain depictions of two or more distinct moments. Benalius and Matteo Capcasa (di Codeca), March 1491 For instance, the image at the head of Inferno 33 shows Dante and Virgil

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IN FERNO 3 3

151

together to distribute privately to friends. Their favorable reception elicited the production of a forged edition in Paris in the early 1800s and authorized editions in 1802 (Rome) and 1807 (London); the latter added Boyd’s translation of the quoted lines. The resulting volumes may be regarded as a fulfillment of Richardson’s view that visual arts can epitomize and supersede poetical and historical works. Lacking the complete text of the poem, they may be more properly called an edition of Dante illustrations rather than an illustrated Comedy. Only decades later would a selection of a dozen of Flaxman’s images be included as illustrations to popular smallformat editions of Henry Francis Cary’s translation of the Comedy.9 12

William Blake A still more delayed diffusion occurred with respect to the series of Dante-inspired drawings and watercolors that William Blake created during the last years of his life (fig. 12). Commissioned by John Linnell, the young painter who had befriended him, the compositions reflect an intensely personal response to Dante’s poem, elements of which Blake blended with his own poetical vision. Working on the commission up to his dying day, Blake completed a total of 102 sketches, seven of which he interpreted onto copperplate, probably with the intention to produce a portfolio like Flaxman’s. Following Blake’s death in 12 William Blake, Count Ugolino and 1827, however, Linnell kept the materials from the uncompleted project as His Sons in Prison, tempera painting on panel, 1827, a private possession. As a result, they would have no influence on readers, Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum much less other illustrators of Dante until the twentieth century, when the

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INFERN O 33

157

Ebba Holm, Inferno 33, woodcut, 1929

Comedy that were published with contemporary translations of the poem in their respective languages. Each in their own style, they reprised one or another of Doré’s treatments of Ugolino grieving over his sons in their vaulted cell. In the United States, a portfolio of thirty-six drawings by Italian American artist Rico Lebrun depicting scenes from Inferno with accompanying passages from John Ciardi’s contemporary translation in terza rima was published by Kanthos Press in 1963 (fig. 19). The body of Lebrun’s Ugolino is intertwined with Ruggieri as he gnaws eternally on his nape; the sons are nowhere present. The edition was designed by Leonard Baskin, who went on to create his own series of 120 ink-and-wash drawings to illustrate Thomas Bergin’s translation of the Comedy, issued by Grossman Publishers in 1969. For Inferno 33, Baskin offers two images: in the first, a pensively grieving Ugolino cradles one of his sons naked within his massive frame; in the second, Ugolino’s head straddles his victim’s, his teeth sunk into its flattened crown (fig. 20).11 A student of Baskin’s, Barry Moser echoed his treatment of Ugolino and Ruggieri in his series of ink-and-wash drawings for Allen Mandelbaum’s verse translation published by the University of California Press in 1980–1982 (fig. 21), only Moser removes the sheet of ice as a visual horizon, leaving the traitors’ heads disembodied in abstract space. Their faces nevertheless give this and the other compositions cited here a literalistic quality. The literalism of scenic depiction characteristic of Doré’s compositions is brought back by Michael Mazur (fig. 22) in the series of monotype prints that he created to illustrate Robert Pinsky’s verse translation of Inferno, issued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1994. Mazur’s

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IN FERNO 3 3

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READING DANTE WITH IMAGES a visual lectura dantis

a visual lectura dantis

HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS

Reading_Dante_Jacket_20210915_00.indd 1-7

EDITED BY

Matthew Collins

Reading dante with images

Matthew Collins

Cover image: Kateřina Machytková, Center of Existence, 2016

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