Chiara Ponchia Suggestions from Antiquity. Discovering Classical Iconographies in the Trecento Divine Comedy Illustrations

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa155-4-46
Title Suggestions from Antiquity. Discovering Classical Iconographies in the Trecento Divine Comedy Illustrations
Author email ponchiachiara1@gmail.com
About author Chiara Ponchia — Ph. D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow. University of Padua. Piazza Capitaniato 7, 35139 Padova, Italy
In the section Classical Antiquity on the Ribs of European Middle Ages DOI10.18688/aa155-4-46
Year 2015 Volume 5 Pages 426–432
Type of article RAR Index UDK 75.056 Index BBK 85.14
Abstract

After Dante’s death (1321), the Divine Comedy quickly became one the most appreciated works of Italian literature. Its spreading was impressively wide, since from the first half of the 14th century patrons asked for illuminated manuscripts of the poem, looking for a visual support to imagine Dante’s pilgrimage through the Hereafter. Therefore, illuminators had to face the difficult challenge of illustrating the text with no previous iconographic tradition. The easiest way to deal with this issue was turning to other sources, choosing among them the most suitable iconographies to be re-used in Dante’s masterpiece illustration. In this article we will see that, just as Dante’s literary sources were both mediaeval and classical, the illuminators’ quest for images wasn’t limited to contemporary sources, and in some cases we might find the echo of Сlassical models in the Divine Comedy illustrations.
Keywords
Reference Chiara Ponchia. Suggestions from Antiquity. Discovering Classical Iconographies in the Trecento Divine Comedy Illustrations. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 5. Eds: Svetlana V. Maltseva, Ekaterina Yu. Stanyukovich-Denisova, Anna V. Zakharova. St. Petersburg, NP-Print Publ., 2015, pp. 426–432. ISSN 2312-2129. http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa155-4-46
Publication Article language english
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