Sandro Botticelli
Drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy

Abstract:
The Comedy, an allegorical didactic poem consisting of 100 sections (canti), was written by Dante Alighieri. Alighieri was born in Florence sometime between mid-May and mid-June 1265, and died in Ravenna on 14 December 1321. He worked on the 'Commedia' from around 1307 until his death, thus spending about 14 years on this text. The adjective 'Divine' was added later, by Giovanni Bocciaccio (1313-1375). The first illustrations for the Divine Comedy are likely to have appeared shortly after Dante’s death in 1321. Initially these were miniatures illustrating the content of the manuscripts. Over the centuries, numerous artists have dealt with the subject, establishing the composition as an enduring element of world literature. The earliest illustrations are almost exclusively miniature envisionings of the manuscript text painted in temperas, and are found at the initials and in the side margins, usually inserted into the borders. The miniatures are subordinate to the text and mostly depict only selected scenes from the Comedy, whereas Botticelli’s illustrations give an overall view of the individual canti. In a great many of his drawings for Dante’s Comedy, a bird’s-eye view gives an all-encompassing portrayal of the events taking place in a canto. The 93 known sheets are made from finest sheepskin parchment. Each measures approximately 32 x 47 cm; they have been cut and probably originally measured several centimetres more in both length and width. The landscape-style sheets were created sometime between the late 1480s and the late 1490s. The text of the Comedy was added later and the sheets were then bound along the long side.