“The Vatican announced on Friday the results of a papal investigation of the concept of limbo. Church doctrine now states that unbaptized babies can go to heaven instead of getting stuck somewhere between heaven and hell” [. . .] –Michelle Tsai, Slate, April 23, 2007
Contributed by Zac Milner (Bowdoin, ’07)
Dante Olive Oil
Found at Nemo Collecting (1940s)
Contributed by Laura Chiesa
Dante Olive Oil featured in the Los Angeles Times on September 3, 2014:
“An employee checks a bottle of Dante olive oil as it travels along the production line at a factory in Montesarchio, Italy. New standards proposed in California would apply only to the largest California olive growers and millers. (Alessia Pierdomenico / Bloomberg)” —LA Times
Hell, the Musical
“The Vatican has challenged purist Roman Catholics by disclosing plans for a daring rock, punk and jazz opera version of Dante’s Divine Comedy with a soundtrack written by an avant-garde priest.
Monsignor Marco Frisina uses rock music as background for the Inferno, Gregorian chants for Purgatory and lyrical and symphonic classical and modern music for the advent of Paradise in the musical set to be staged in the autumn.
After a premier in a leading Rome theatre sponsored jointly by the Vatican and Italy’s two houses of parliament, the extravaganza will tour other major Italian and European cities ‘to bring back the attention of the widest public to Dante’s immortal poem,’ Riccardo Rossi, director general of Nova Ars, the company producing the opera, told La Repubblica newspaper.” –John Phillips, The Independent, January 3, 2007
See also : La Divina Commedia home page.
Contributed by Gloria Smith; Patrick Molloy
“Stolen Goya Found in Montenegro”
“The oil painting, Count Ugolino, had been lifted from a gallery in Turin, northern Italy, in December 2001.
Goya’s work – which evokes a gory episode from Dante’s Inferno – was retrieved during a raid on a flat near the Montenegrin capital of Pogdorica.
Two brothers were detained. The painting had been insured for £277,000 after being bought for £140 in 1999.
At the time, it was bought as an anonymous work, but experts later attributed it to Goya.
The work – which is roughly as large as an A4 sheet – refers to one of the most shocking tales from medieval Italy.
In his Divine Comedy, Dante told the story of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, who, according to his story, ended up eating the flesh of his children after all the male members of the family were starved to death by Ugolino’s enemies. —BBC News, June 15, 2005
Contributed by Susan Wegner
