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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Commedia-Inspired Renaissance Paintings?

January 6, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

renaissance-painted-ceiling-angels-circling-a-light-art-name-the-triumph-of-the-name-of-jesus-by-giocanni-battista

This review was written in reference to Martin Kemp’s examinations of John Took’s Dante. For more analysis, read the full article here.

“Kemp’s idea is to set up a paragone, comparing, on the one hand, Dante’s scientific and metaphorical/theological understanding of light and sight in the Divine Comedy (1308–21), especially in Paradiso, to, on the other, renderings of divine light in Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting. He opens with a scholarly survey of late medieval natural science accounts of optics and of light (noting in particular the widely accepted theories of the late 10th-/early 11th-century mathematician Ibn al-Haytham, known as Alhazan), before laying out what he understands of Dante’s knowledge of, and interest in, this topic, which he terms the poet’s ‘dazzle’—the failure of sight when confronted with the splendore (blinding light) of Empyrean Heaven.

[. . .] “Kemp makes periodic disclaimers throughout the book that it is impossible to cite documented or obvious connections between Dante’s light and works of art (except for illuminated or illustrated editions of the Commedia) but, to avoid cutting the ground from under his own feet, he makes a Roger-Fry swerve: the viewer will need a special sensitivity to see the ‘Dantesque’ as Kemp does. ‘The more general and less discernible diaspora [of Dante’s divine light] is something that can be sensed as a common factor as we pass from one scheme of decoration to another. This is not a matter of firm historical demonstration so much as the deployment of visual and poetic instinct.’ Kemp is insistent, pounding away with Maslow’s hammer throughout, that it is Dante’s divine light that appears in all the works he cites. It must be said that, in the paragone he proposes, it is not a question of attributable sources that is the problem; it is the category failure of comparing poetry with painting, apples with pears. Ultimately, Dante himself says that the only possible answer to ‘Who does divine light best?’ has to be God Himself, lux eterna.”     –Donald Lee, The Art Newspaper, July 2, 2021

See our posts on John Took here and Martin Kemp here.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2021, Art History, Dantists, Empyrean, God, Heaven, Illumination, Light, Paintings, Paradiso, Renaissance

Illuminating Dante Exhibit at the University of Arkansas

October 23, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

illuminating-dante-poster-small

“Presented from October 5-31, the exhibit consists of 22 items from Special Collections, including a recently acquired 1520 exemplar of the Divine Comedy with commentary by Cristoforo Landino, one full-page woodcut illustration, and 98 smaller woodcuts introducing each canto. Also on view are various editions of Dante’s masterpiece in Italian and English, with illustrations by Gustave Doré and John Flaxman, and works connected to or inspired by the Divine Comedy, including a collection of poems by Vittoria Colonna (1548) and a treatise by Lucrezia Marinella (1601).

“The exhibit includes medieval, early modern, and modern illustrations of the Divine Comedy, ranging from 13th-century illuminations to Sandro Botticelli’s and William Blake’s illustrations. Finally, the exhibit displays works that explore the reception of Dante’s masterpiece across cultural contexts, with works from countries including Spain and France. Examples from the African American community are represented, as well.” [. . .]    — University of Arkansas News, October 5, 2021

See more information about the exhibit here.

Categories: Places, Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2021, 700th anniversary, Adaptations, African American, Arkansas, Collections, Divine Comedy, Exhibits, Fayetteville, Gustave Doré, Illumination, Illustrations, Italian, John Flaxman, United States, University

Schaub and Schaub, “Dante’s Path: A Practical Approach to Achieving Inner Wisdom” (2004)

September 15, 2006 By Professor Arielle Saiber

schaub-and-schaub-dantes-path-a-practical-approach-to-achieving-inner-wisdom“Dante’s Path: A Practical Approach to Achieving Inner Wisdom is primarily a self-help book. However, it is a self-help book with a difference. Authors Bonney Gulino Schaub and Richard Schaub use their perceptive, though simple reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy to guide their readers through a process that allows them to access their internal wisdom, or ‘wisdom mind,’ to achieve liberation from their fears and to realize their deeper potential.” [. . .]    —Amazon

See also Dante’s Path: Vulnerability and the Spiritual Journey (2014) and Il potere di Dante: Un cammino di illuminazione per una vita piena e felice (2021), by the same authors.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2004, Fear, Florence, Freedom, Illumination, Italy, Non-Fiction, Psychology, Self-Help, Spirituality, Wisdom

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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