Beatrice Portinari

54 BEATRICE PORTINARI (1265-1290) The muse who guided the journey into Paradise

THE SPACE

A heavenly painted ceiling dominates this elegant suite with a scene from Greek mythology “Allegory of Night.” The woman covered in the marian blue flying veil is the personification of “Night.” She gently cradles two babies, representing “Sleep” and “Death.” Twinkling stars against a royal azure sky are painted below her as a hint of her identity while the rest of the ceiling is illuminated with heavenly pastels and flying angels.

There is a French window at the end of the suite, perfectly designed for the youthful Lady Beatrice. Inside this charming space, there is an interesting interplay between the real pane glass windows looking onto the Florentine street of Via dello Studio, juxtaposed with painted French window depicting scenes from an imaginary countryside. The window ceiling is rendered in the style of a garden house protected by a stained glass roof decorated with greenery and the Ricciardi-Serguidi coat of arms.

Surely one of the most elaborately adorned suites in Palazzo Portinari Salviati, it is dedicated to Beatrice Portinari, the muse of Dante Alighieri, and his symbol of divine love.

THE STORY

No mention of Dante Alghileri, the great Italian poet, is complete without including the name Beatrice Portinari. In his works La Vita Nova (“The New Life”) and the epic La Divina Commedia (“The Divine Comedy”), Beatrice was alluded to

CEILING PAINTING OF THE ALLEGORY OF NIGHT

A heavenly painted ceiling with a scene from Greek mythology “Allegory of Night” The woman covered in the marian blue flying veil is the personification of “Night,” the goddess Nyx. She is the mother of the twins, “Sleep” (Hypnos) and “Death” (Thanatos).

and portrayed in ways that reveal the poet’s undying admiration for her, her role as his lifetime muse, and his ideal of the all things graceful and divine.

The daughter of an influential banker

Beatrice was born to Folco Portinari, a banker whose family had come to Florence from the nearby town of Fiesole which had been conquered in 1125 by the Florentines. In medieval Florence, the Portinari were among the most important families, whose greatest contribution was the donation of the first hospital in town - the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in 1288. The family continued to support the hospital for generations and it is still in service today.

The Portinari family resided in a house that stood where the Palazzo Portinari would later come into being. It was here that the young Dante supposedly met Beatrice for the first time, when he attended a May Day party with his father in the house. Dante described the encounter in La Vita Nova:

Despite both being only 9 years old, Dante was drawn to Beatrice, with a powerful attraction that he described in La Vita Nova, “At that time, truly, I say, the vital spirit, which dwells in the innermost chamber of the heart, started to tremble so powerfully that its disturbance reached all the way to the slightest of my pulses.”

By Dante’s own account, the two met for a second time a few years later on the Ponte Santa Trinita bridge. However, it is

Nine times, the heaven of the light had returned to where it was at my birth, almost to the very same point of its orbit, when the glorious lady of my mind first appeared before my eyes - she whom many called Beatrice without even knowing that was her name. She had already been in this life long enough for the heaven of the fixed stars to have moved toward the east a twelfth of a degree since she was born, so that she was at the beginning of her ninth year when she appeared to me, and I saw her when I was almost at the end of my ninth.

58 believed that the two never even conversed. They went on to marry other people; Beatrice to a banker, Simone dei Bardi, while Dante married Gemma Donati, who in comparison to

Beatrice, was never mentioned in any of Dante’s work.

Dante’s guide into Paradise

Beatrice’s untimely death at age 24 left Dante in deep anguish. He retreated into intense study to compose prose and verse that, combined with his work done over the previous decade, became La Vita Nova. It is a chronicle of Dante’s passion for Beatrice since their first encounter up until her death. In the final chapter of La Vita Nova, Dante vowed not to write anything further of Beatrice until he could produce something “concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman.” He fulfilled this promise years later in La Divina Commedia, in which Beatrice takes over from Virgil as Dante’s guide into Paradise, for Virgil is pagan and not allowed to enter heaven.

The most famous literary muse of all time

In La Divina Commedia, when Dante first sets sight on Beatrice in Purgatory, he is mesmerized by her presence as he had been in real life at the age of nine. Dante wrote a powerful description of her appearance, which is now carved on the outer wall of Palazzo Portinari Salviati (see below):

Over her snow-white veil encircled with olives, appeared a lady under a green mantle, vested in the color of the living flame. Dante Purgatorio Canto XXX 31-33 The window’s ceiling is painted in the style of a garden house the Ricciardi coat of arms.

Eventually, she leads him into divine bliss through their journey in Paradise. And in the presence of Beatrice’s transcendent beauty and spiritualized love, they are enveloped in light and enter the abode of God.

Despite there existing very few facts known of her actual life or even the accuracy of her encounters with Dante, Beatrice Portinari has become the most famous literary muse of all time. Dante’s platonic love for Beatrice guided his understanding of the divine, purified his life, and inspired one of the greatest works of literature in human history.

DANTE ENCOUNTERING BEATRICE

1850, oil on canvas This is an imaginary scene that depicts the encounter between Dante and Beatrice. Famous Florence architecture such as the Palazzo Vecchio tower as well as the Giotto tower can be seen in the background.