A famous portrait

“Our poet was thus of average height, and, advanced in his years, was somewhat stooped, solemn and gentle in movement, and always dressed in simple garb suited to his mature years. His face was long, his nose aquiline, and his eyes large rather than small; he had a great jaw, and his lower lip protruded beyond the upper; his colour was dark, his hair and beard thick, black and curly; and his expression always melancholic and pensive”[1]. This is the description of Dante in his later years that Giovanni Boccaccio provides in his Trattatello in laude di Dante. Although he had never met the poet, he probably obtained reliable information in Ravenna from people who had met and become acquainted with the Florentine exile. Boccaccio’s claims regarding the poet’s height, physical appearance and facial features were by no means dismissed when Dante’s bones were examined in 1865 and 1921. Further confirmation of the substantial reliability of Boccaccio’s description emerges from the comparison of the two earliest portraits of Dante, both posthumous. The first of these is the 1337 painting in the Chapel of Santa Maria Maddalena in the Palazzo Bargello in Florence, attributed to Giotto’s studio, depicting a young man with features as described by Boccaccio, namely, a pronounced - though not exactly hooked - nose, and a prominent lower lip. The second and fairly similar portrait is the recently-restored late fourteenth century fresco in Florence’s Palazzo dell’Arte dei Giudici e Notai. While two visual representations and a compatible written description may not give us Dante’s “true face”, they nonetheless provide a clear indication of the fourteenth century iconography associated with the poet.

[1] G. Boccaccio, Vite di Dante, a cura di P.G. Ricci, Milano, Mondadori, 2002, p. 31.