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The Arrangement of Dante's Purgatorial Reliefs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

H. D. Austin
H. D. Austin*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Extract

The description of the marble reliefs which depict examples of humility, in the tenth canto of Purgatory,—the Annunciation, David and the Ark, Trajan and the widow—has been universally admired, and often studied and discussed. But it seems to me, for several reasons, that the specific matter of the order in which their details are presented may certainly be considered further with interest, and perhaps with profit—although the fact of their orderly sequence is, in at least a general way, obvious to every reader.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 1932 , pp. 1 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 The most recent study, to my knowledge, is an unpublished Master's thesis by Rachel Fort: The Bas Reliefs in Dante's PURGATORIO and Some Analogues in Classics and Medieval Literature (University of Chicago, June 1929).—Why they should be designated as “Bas-reliefs” is not clear.

2 Yet, if this be the true explanation, one wonders why the poet did not carry out an analogous plan in the examples of pride: the second there (xii, 28 ff.) presents Briareus.

3 Vs. 67: “Di contra, effigiata …”: the description of the second scene on Daedalus' temple makes an attempt at definiteness, with the same word “contra” (Aen., vi, 23): “Contra elata mari respondet Gnosia tellus”; but the direction is not specified; and the word “tellus” offers little of visualizable suggestiveness.

4 (Purg., x, 77) “e una vedovella li era al freno.”—The account as preserved in the Novellino says that she “took him by the stirrup (staffa)”; but Dante was evidently following a briefer form of the story, such as that found, for instance, in the MS. version printed by William Friedmann, in Gesellschaft für romanische literatur, Vol. 14 (Dresden, 1908), “Altitalienische Heiligenlegenden, nach der HS. XXXVIII. 110 der Bib. nazionale centrale in Florenz” (legend xvi), p. 58: “… e una vedoa, a chi era morto malamente el fiolo, ge fo encontra e dissege: …” This places her much more advantageously with regards to the composition of the picture: Trajan on horseback and the widow to the right are facing each other. Those who consider the legend to have arisen out of sculptures representing a female figure, really a personified Province, humbled before the Emperor—e.g., the relief reproduced by C. Ricci in his Div. Comm. illustrata nei luoghi, nelle persone, nelle cose (Milano, Hoepli, 1921), Vol. ii, facing p. 460—must necessarily follow this shorter form of the story.

5 Vs. 80 f.: “… l'aguglie ne l'oro / sovr' essi in vista al vento si movieno.” The commentators who, like S. A. Barbi, Vandelli, etc., consider Dante to have thought of the Roman “eagles” in terms of mediæval banners, as being figured on grounds of gold cloth, will find gracefully waving banners overhead, in the relief referred to in the preceding note; but the half-tone reproduction gives no hint of any figures thereon, either of eagles or other shapes.

6 The mosaic in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, given in C. Ricci, op. cit., p. 460, is certainly not the source: that representation shows the Ark being carried by priests, in strict accordance with the Bible account of the occasion of Michal's scorn (II Reg., vi, 13). Dante syncretized two separate episodes: see Scartazzini, Leipzig ed. of D.C., note to Purg., x, 56.

7 Vs. 50.

8 Vs. 40: “Giurato si sarìa ch' el dicesse ‘Avel!‘”

9 Of the highest interest in connection with this train of ideas are the deductions of A. Schmarsow, in his work Italienische Kunst im Zeitalter Dantes (Augsburg, Benno Filser, 1928) regarding the relation of picture-sequence, in Italian art, to normal sentence-order. A reviewer, F. Torrefranca in La Fiera Letteraria (Feb. 17, 1929, p. 4), expounds the concept in the following words: “Chiameremo mistiche queste considerazioni: che le rappresentazioni plastiche di quest' epoca debbano essere lette da sinistra a destra come un verso e che soltanto in questa direzione gli effetti si sommano e l'interesse plastico e narrativo concresce e, per ciò, lo spazio vi diventa tempo?”—The sudden uprise in the Trajan relief suggests, too, another idea from the same work; the following quotations from the same review will make this point clear: “… quando il gotico è introdotto in Italia, ai due sensi dell' orizzontale e della verticale” (by this latter, meaning the principle that the artistic figurations are to be read, not only from left to right in each line, but also from top to bottom, with regard to the successive lines, like the verses of a stanza) “si sostituisce quello, per così dire, dell'altezza che si drizza in piedi” … and: “Da per tutto sono rintracciati e messi in luce i due momenti gotici (il narrativo destrorso e il saliente) delle opere d'arte.”

10 “Dicunt sancti, quod sicut ex superbissima, scilicet Eva, natus est morbus, ita ex humilissima, scilicet Maria, medicina; et ideo converso nomine hoc Eva, dicitur Ave.”

11 Quoted, in part, by C. S. Baldwin, in Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 135.

12 Vs. 817.

13 Cf. the following from Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. ii (New York: Macmillan, 1923), p. 698, concerning the Speculum astronomiae (probably by Albertus Magnus; Thorndike says, p. 692, that “it seems to be one of the most important single treatises in the history of medieval astrology”): “Of images the author describes three varieties, the first two of which he severely condemns. The first kind is abominable, including the images of Toz Graecus and Germath of Babylon, those connected with the worship of Venus, and those of Belenus and Hermes. These are exorcised by the names of fifty-four angels who are said to serve in the circle of the moon. … The names of seven are engraved forwards to procure a good result and backwards in order to ward off evil fortune.”

14 See, e.g., my article, “From Matter to Spirit,” in MLN, xxxviii (March, 1923), pp. 140–148.

15 Il Tesoro, volgarizzato da Bono Giamboni (Venice, 1839), i, 56 (p. 65 f.): “Eforas … e molti dicono che egli ebbe nome Malachiel … trovò le lettere degli Ebrei, e figurolle, e insegnò loro a scrivere per diritto verso, e lasciare lo sinistro. Chè prima iscrivevano ora innanzi ora indietro, sì come fanno i buoi che arano / la terra.”

16 Cf., e.g., Varro (quoted in Harper's Lot. Dict.): “alia nomina, quod quinque habent figuras, habere quinque casus” (Ling. Lai., 9, 52); or Quintilian (ibid.): “quaedam [verba] tertiae demum personae figura dicuntur, ut licet, piget” (Inst. orat., 1, 4, 29).

17 Inst. Orat., 9, 1, 10: “figura duobus modis dicitur: uno qualiscumque forma sententiae …, altero, quo proprie schema dicitur, in sensu vel sermone aliqua a vulgari et simplici specie cum ratione mutatio.”

18 Vol. vi, col. 730, l.36 f.: “speciatim apud artis grammaticae et oratoriae scriptores” … ibid., col. 731, l.19 f.: “speciatim de iuncturis verborum vel adiectivorum cum obiectis suis.”

19 Conv., iv, vi, 3: “… cominciando da l'A, ne l'U quindi si rivolve, e viene diritto per I ne l'E, quindi si rivolve e torna ne l'O; sì che veramente imagina questa figura: A, E, I, O, U, la quale è figura di legame.”

20 It should be noticed that there are several other words in the description of the reliefs which may with advantage be taken in technical senses: (1) “intagli,” in vs. 32 (cf. “intagliato,” vss. 38; 55), is of course one of them; though it was applied in the Middle Ages to any sort of carving, including relief, as here, and even to ornamenting cloth—possibly with appliqué work (See Parodi's explanation in the Glossary to his ed. of Il Fiore e il Dello d'Amore, Florence, 1922)—as well as to painting (Intelligenza, 216, 219, &c.) (2) “imagine,” in vs. 39, plur. in vs. 98 (cf. “imaginata,” vs. 41, masc. in vs. 62), in its fundamental sense of a plastic figuration, as also in Par., xix, 95 and xx, 139; Conv., ii, iv, 6; Rim., c, 13; cf. also “ymaginibus constellationum” in Quest., 71. (3) “imposta” in vs. 52: a verb used in the arts and trades to mean “making up” a wax figure, “setting up” the web on a loom etc. (Cf. Eng. impose as a technical term of printing). (4) “effigiata” in vs. 67 (used only here by Dante; noun, effige or effigie, not found at all in his works). (5) “storiata” in vs. 73 (cf. “storia,” in vss. 52 and 71): almost a technical verb, in the sense of adorning walls, etc., with representations of historical or legendary scenes and actions; cf. French historié, Eng. storied (e.g., “storied windows” in Milton's Il Penseroso, 159). Technical terms, mostly from the fine arts, abound in the following portions of Purg., from x, 130 to xii, 65.