the days of his early enthusiasms, but, even in that guise, placed in Paradise. Later in the nineteenth century, Ingo Kraus and M. Jules Levallois have noticed the same face and figure in the Strozzi Chapel, but the allusions of some, or all of them, would seem to show a confusion of the Last Judgment, in which their Dante appears, with the Heaven of the just. Herr Volkmann vaguely alludes to a discovery of "Dante among the Blessed," executed by Orcagna, but his lack of precision has led to uncertainty as to whether he meant the alleged Dante in the Last Judgment, or the Paradise of Orcagna.

In 1900 M. Jacques Mesnil, in an article already named, and, more recently, in another contribution † to the literature of the subject, has clearly traced the points of resemblance, in this figure in Orcagna's Last Judgment, to the face and features of Dante as perpetuated by artistic tradition. The characteristics common to nearly all of these successive reproductions are summarized by M. Mesnil as follows:

"The features are vigorously marked, the bony framework visible, the jaws strong, the countenance elongated, the forehead high, the chin well drawn and energetic, the upper lip a little effaced, the lower lip stronger and slightly protruding; but the nose above all is typical, and it has not been clearly characterized by saying that it is aquiline: it is large and it presents a swelling well defined above the middle" (or bridge); "from there, even to the extremity, its line is straight, or presents a light concavity; finally, the point descends notably, lower than the insertion of the nostrils. This nose is quite peculiar" (or individual).

The figure signalled by M. Mesnil, presumably the same as that noticed by Barlow and others I have named, is in the group of the elect, in the Last Judgment, of the Orcagnas, or of Nardo Orcagna, if executed by him alone, as some think. This figure stands in the highest row of those depicted without the nimbus, or halo of sanctity. The face, certainly, has many of those features that have become traditional and typical of Dantesque portraiture, and it does show considerable resemblance to the Neapolitan bust of the poet, as seen in profile. In the figure he has indicated in the fresco of the Last Judgment, M. Mesnil thinks to explain the absence of that most prominent character

istic of the face of Dante, the projection of the lower lip (here lacking), by the plea that ill-advised and clumsily executed restorations have overladen the original work and altered the primitive contour, particularly in the lower part of the figure.

The figure appears clothed in a robe common to magistrates of that time and of a roseate, or reddish color; the head wears the hood appropriate to the garment, and the face is uplifted towards Christ, the Eternal Judge above, to the right of the observer, in the heights of Heaven. In meeting objections to the position, of this alleged Dante, before our Lord as Judge, M. Mesnil maintains that Dante's attitude is one of adoration, not of supplication; that he stands among those whose salvation is already announced, and that immediately above him is a row of saints. Certainly, the face bears the impress of ecstatic adoration, while the joined hands are pleadingly upraised as in a gesture of prayerful petition. The face and figure are rather more aged than would be expected in a representation of Dante, notably more so than the Dante believed to have been identified by Signor Chiappelli, in the Paradise, of this chapel, which I shall presently describe.

Allowing the Dante of the Last Judgment to be allegorically shown still afar off and yearning for the beatific vision, this condition is not out of harmony with the poetic conception of Antonio Pucci, a contemporary of Orcagna, who, in a chapter of his Centiloquio, in honor of Dante, supposes the poet, as in the natural order of things, to be in Purgatory and Saviour to draw him out, and he beseeches the Blessed Virgin and the saints to intercede to that end, since Dante, he declared, was worthy of Heaven. M. Mesnil, however, considers that Dante, in this scene of the final Judgment, already stands among the just made perfect, and he asserts that Dante is "in the midst of an assembly quite as imposing as that represented upon the neighboring fresco"; that "there are found kings, high dignitaries of the church, monks, a Roman emperor (assuredly Trajan or Constantine). Immediately above Dante is a rank of saints. He is placed in evidence the utmost that is possible, his profile stands out vividly from a sombre background; the hands joined, the gaze lost in contemplation of the divinity in an act of adoration and not at all of supplication; he appears clad in bright vesture, detaching

sign of the painter to have been to represent, on this side, "the defenders of the true faith in opposition with infidels and heretics, represented on the other side of the window."

Signor Alessandro Chiappelli has proceeded upon the presumption (to me well grounded), that it is more natural to seek for portraiture of Dante in the fresco representing the subject of his third "Cantico," or part of the "Divine Comedy," the Paradise upon which the poet had relied for recognition and reward, both here and hereafter. Giotto had set an example and established a certain precedent in the chapel of the Florentine palace of the podesta, where appears that portrait of Dante to which I have already alluded, the oldest in existence, antedating, by at least ten years (perhaps more), the mural frescoes of the Orcagnas, in this Strozzi Chapel. Chiappelli and Professor Pasquale Papa* both discern a certain dependence of the Paradise of Orcagna upon that of Giotto and that the Orcagna brothers both had in mind the work of the great master who preceded them. I share the belief of Signor Chiappelli† that artistic precedent establishes a point in favor of his presumption of place, and that the tender faith of the time that the dead poet had, from the scarcely finished pages of his Paradise, already attained the beatific vision in the Heavens described by him, leads us naturally to seek the semblance of his physical presence in the Paradise made real by Dante's vivid imagery. With their minds and imaginations enkindled with enthusiasm for the works of the Florentine poet, so recently dead in exile, the Orcagnas, when "embellishing with their brushes the chapel dedicated to the glory of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the greatest Dominican church of Florence, and peopling the walls with likenesses of famous churchmen, swordsmen, of citizens of renown, perhaps even of artificers, and certainly of many devout women, would not neglect to depict in Paradise the figure of Dante, who had learned the doctrines of St. Thomas in the school of Santa Maria Novella, and, later, had invested them with the immortal form of poetry."

This is, indeed, all the more likely from the fact that the description of Paradise given by Dante did not lend itself easily to artistic interpretation and, since it was not possible to the art or artists of that day and generation to give pictorial expression to the poet's thought, what more natural than to commemorate him by portraiture? His ideas and poetical con

*Giornale Dantesco, XII., 1903. Il Ritratto di Dante, in Nuova Antologia, April, 1903, Rome.

ceptions were closely followed, where it was within the measure of the possible, as we see in Nardo Orcagna's Hell, in the Strozzi Chapel.

In seeking to identify an alleged portrait of Dante, it would seem preferable to compare it with such descriptions and data as have come down to us from contemporaries of the poet, or from the generation immediately succeeding him, rather than to apply the test of artistic tradition, leading, after Raphael, to conceptions largely fanciful, not infrequently degenerating almost to the grotesque. The first biographer of Dante was Giovanni Boccaccio. Born eight years before the death of Dante, Boccaccio (whose genius has not been denied by those who dislike the manner of its exercise) conceived for his illustrious predecessor a passionate, reverent admiration, that found expression in various ways. With his own hand Boccaccio transcribed the whole of the "Divine Comedy," in a manuscript edition which he presented to Petrarch. A chair of interpretation of Dante's immortal work was created through Boccaccio's influence, and his lectures, in this course, delivered in the Church of San Stefano, at Florence, give to that church, by association with this lectureship, its chief interest to travellers of to-day. The Comento Sopra Dante, a voluminous work of Boccaccio, displaying a large amount of miscellaneous learning, was (according to J. A. Symonds), the fruit of this activity. It is divided into fifty-nine lectures and is carried down to the Inferno, xvii. 17. Boccaccio's personal influence certainly was an immense factor in creating and spreading enthusiasm for Dante's work among men of his generation. His life of Dante is attributed to a comparatively early period of his life. Mr. Symonds thinks it may have been written in 1350, when the Florentines sent Boccaccio to Ravenna with a present of ten golden florins for the poet's daughter. Boccaccio expressly stated, in a preface to his life of Dante, that it was intended as a slight amends to his memory, in compensation for his exile and for the absence of any monument to him in the city that had cast him out, that turbulent Florence which has so often stoned the prophets and persecuted them that were sent unto her! To give his book more widespread circulation, Boccaccio wrote his life of Dante in Italian, instead of Latin.

Although Boccaccio's written description of Dante's face and figure did not appear until after the mural frescoes in