HKB
[Footnote 24: Vide the opening of the De Monarchia.]
In a fresco in the chapel of the old palace of the Podestà[25] at Florence is a portrait of Dante, said to be by the hand of his contemporary Giotto. It was discovered in 1841 under the whitewash, and a tracing made by Mr. Seymour Kirkup has been reproduced in fac-simile by the Arundel Society. The fresco was afterwards restored or repainted with no happy success. He is represented as he might have been in the year of Campaldino (1289). The countenance is youthful yet manly, more manly than it appears in the engravings of the picture; but it only suggests the strong deep features of the well-known traditional face. He is drawn with much of the softness, and melancholy pensive sweetness, and with something also of the quaint stiffness of the Vita Nuova--with his flower and his book. With him is drawn his master, Brunetto Latini,[26] and Corso Donati. We do not know what occasion led Giotto thus to associate him with the great "Baron." Dante was, indeed, closely connected with the Donati. The dwelling of his family was near theirs, in the "Quarter of Scandal," the Ward of the Porta S. Piero. He married a daughter of their house, Madonna Gemma. None of his friends are commemorated with more affection than the companion of his light and wayward days, remembered not without a shade of anxious sadness, yet with love and hope, Corso's brother, Forese.[27] No sweeter spirit sings and smiles in the illumined spheres of Paradise, than she whom Forese remembers as on earth one,
Che tra bella e buona Non so qual fosse più--[28]
and who, from the depth of her heavenly joy, teaches the poet that in the lowest place among the blessed there can be no envy[29]--the sister of Forese and Corso, Piccarda. The Commedia, though it speaks, as if in prophecy, of Corso's miserable death, avoids the mention of his name.[30] Its silence is so remarkable as to seem significant. But though history does not group together Corso and Dante, the picture represents the truth--their fortunes were linked together. They were actors in the same scene--at this distance of time two of the most prominent; though a scene very different from that calm and grave assembly, which Giotto's placid pencil has drawn on the old chapel wall.
[Footnote 25: The Bargello, a prison (1850); a museum (1878). V. Vasari, p. 311.]
[Footnote 26: He died in 1294. G. Vill. viii. 10.]
[Footnote 27: Purgat. c. 23.]
[Footnote 28: Ibid. c. 24.
My sister, good and beautiful--which most I know not.--WRIGHT.]
[Footnote 29: Parad. c. 3.]
[Footnote 30: Purg. c. 24, 82-87.]