Dante, Artist of Gesture 0192866990, 9780192866998

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Dante, Artist of Gesture

Dante, Artist of Gesture H E AT H ER W EB B

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Heather Webb 2022 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022937439 ISBN 978–0–19–286699–8 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Acknowledgements This book was written in pandemic conditions; I am all the more grateful to those who supported my work in the most trying circumstances. Without research leave made possible by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, this book would never have found its way to completion. The Leverhulme administrators showed kindness and flexibility in permitting an extension when work was stalled by library and school closures. Claire Honess and Simon Gilson believed in the project and supported it from the earliest stages; their guidance and faith made it possible. It was Giuseppe Ledda who first made it clear to me that this was the next monograph I needed to write, and that my research on gesture in Dante merited more comprehensive treatment than I had initially allowed it. I am grateful to him for his sage advice and his feedback on various aspects of the arguments in these pages. Gervase Rosser offered crucial insight and encouragement at a number of necessary points in the book’s trajectory. Conversations with many generous colleagues have sustained the work that has come together here, including Charlotte Alton, Zyg Barański, Paolo Borsa, David Bowe, Abigail Brundin, Theodore Cachey, George Corbett, Sonia Gentili, Robert Gordon, Robert Harrison, Catherine Keen, Robin Kirkpatrick, Aiste˙ Kiltinavicˇiūte˙, Nicolò Morelli, Vittorio Montemaggi, Daragh O’Connell, Anna Pegoretti, Helena PhillipsRobins, Catherine Pickstock, Katherine Powlesland, and Jonny Wiles. The Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and Selwyn College provided spaces, communities, and sustenance of all kinds for the project. I am grateful to the editorial team at Oxford University Press, and owe a huge debt of gratitude to the anonymous readers who provided expert feedback on the book. Finally, all my thanks to my family, and especially to Pierpaolo Antonello, for their untiring love and support.

Contents List of Illustrations Editions and Translations

Introduction: Viewing and Reading Gesture

vii viii

1

1. Reading Bodies in Motion

14

2. Dante as Visual Artist

39

3. Fixity and Flexibility

67

4. Modelling Gestural Virtues in Dante’s Purgatorio

103

5. Asymmetrical Affections

131

6. Heavenly Proximities and Contagions

156

Bibliography Index

188 198

List of Illustrations 0.1. Dante and Virgil meet Statius. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 100v (detail).

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2.1. Virgil picking a reed to bind around Dante’s waist. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 64v (detail).

47

2.2. The Ark of the Covenant in procession. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 80v (detail).

59

3.1. Visitation, Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence. Public domain.

96

3.2. Giotto, Visitation, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

97

3.3. Giotto, Pact of Judas, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

98

3.4. Giotto, Invidia, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

100

3.5. Giotto, Karitas, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

101

3.6. Sordello and Virgil. © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. MS. Holkham misc. 48, p. 67 (detail).

102

4.1. Dante’s visions of Mary and Peisistratus’ wife. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 90r (detail).

107

4.2. Dante’s vision of the stoning of Stephen. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 90v (detail).

112

4.3. The gluttonous beside the tree. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 107r (detail).

116

4.4. The gluttonous. © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. MS. Holkham misc. 48, p. 103 (detail).

118

4.5. Botticelli, Purgatorio Canto 23. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

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4.6. Botticelli, Purgatorio Canto 24. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

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4.7. Giotto, Spes, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

127

4.8. Giotto, Desperatio, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

128

4.9. Giotto, Inconstantia, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

129

5.1. Botticelli, Paradiso Canto 20. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

148

5.2. Botticelli, Paradiso Canto 5. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

154

6.1. Paradiso Canto 27 © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 174r (detail).

184

6.2. Paradiso Canto 33 © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 185r (detail).

186

Editions and Translations Unless otherwise stated, editions and translations of Dante’s works are the following: La Commedia, ed. Giorgio Inglese, 3 vols. (Rome: Carocci, 2016). The Divine Comedy, trans. Robin Kirkpatrick, 3 vols. (London: Penguin, 2006–7). Some translations have been altered slightly for literal meanings in descriptions of gestures. Convivio, ed. Gianfranco Fioravanti, with the canzoni edited by Claudio Giunta (Milan: Mondadori, 2019). Translation by Richard H. Lansing as found on Columbia University’s Digital Dante website, available at https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/the-convivio/. De vulgari eloquentia, ed. and trans. Steven Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Epistole, Egloge, Questio de aqua et terra, ed. Marco Baglio, Luca Azzetta, Marco Petoletti, and Michele Rinaldi (Rome: Salerno, 2016), pp. 192–217 (p. 204). Translation and commentary in Claire Honess, Dante Alighieri, Four Political Letters (London: MHRA, 2007). Monarchia, ed. Prue Shaw (Florence: Le Lettere, 2009). Vita nuova, Rime, ed. Donato Pirovano and Marco Grimaldi (Rome: Salerno, 2015). Vita nuova, trans. Andrew Frisardi (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012). https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/la-vitanuova-frisardi/. Some translations have been altered slightly.

Introduction Viewing and Reading Gesture One thing that the Covid pandemic has made painfully clear is that physical proximity matters. We have had to teach ourselves new ways of perceiving our bodily distance from others as we have had to accept new forms of regulation of our bodily movement in public space. At a moment in which we are asked to protect ourselves and others by constantly assessing and maintaining distance, it seems vital to consider what is at stake in ethical and political systems of proximity and isolation. Dante, Artist of Gesture proposes thinking Dante’s Commedia as a fourteenth-century construction of a dynamic gestural system of inclination towards one’s neighbour, a sort of ethos of proximity. The kinesic mode of human response that emerges over the course of the three canticles depends on intra- and extra-textual recourse to a vast array of images and cultural practices, inviting the reader to participate in a choreography with implications that are ethical, political, and spiritual. Described gestures, particularly as staged in Dante’s realm of Purgatory, are one key way in which the poet seeks to make his characters recognizable to readers, even as they function as examples of vice or virtue.¹ But how do those gestures render themselves visible? How do they, in their particular instantiations, depend on known examples of vices and virtues? How does gesture act in Dante’s Commedia and how can we, as readers, ‘view’ and respond to gesture in Dante? Endeavouring to answer these questions will require an innovative methodology that bridges modes of investigation between textual and visual analysis.² When Dante says: ‘vedi’ (look) in his text, as he so often does, I suggest he is inviting the reader into a series of practices that include but also exceed what we now think of as reading and might have much to do with what we think of as viewing, as when we view a work or a programme of visual art. ¹ In my Dante’s Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), I began to think about the role that gestures play in rendering characters as persons. This present volume picks up from those initial considerations found in the chapter entitled ‘Gestural Persons’, pp. 34–82. ² Moving between textual and visual analysis is a challenge for anyone trained in one or the other of these fields. As someone trained in textual analysis, I accept that there will be gaps in my work and express gratitude to the scholars in visual analysis who have patiently helped me along. I expand in further detail in the chapters that follow on the reasons why I believe that it is impossible to read gesture in Dante without working through visual analysis alongside textual analysis. Dante, Artist of Gesture. Heather Webb, Oxford University Press. © Heather Webb (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.003.0001

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The art historian Michael Baxandall famously argued that texts may allow a reconstruction of how the visual arts were seen; my proposal moves in the opposite direction to suggest an exploration of the ways in which the visual arts may allow a reconstruction of how Dante’s text could have been and can be read.³ If Dante’s text is part of an ‘ecosystem’ of texts that are as often visual as they are verbal, and Giotto and Ovid, both named in the poem, are equally part of the reader’s expected landscape of reference; it follows that we need to think about Dante’s poetry itself as also visual.⁴ In this mode, the poem draws on a visual catalogue of images and places with known practices of observation associated with those images and places. A vast number of descriptions in the poem cannot stand without the reader’s knowledge of some aspect of medieval catalogues of ‘stock’ images. What might an Annunciation look like? How do painters show Christ rising from the tomb? Dante’s poetry relies on knowledge of visual images that is not always obvious to readers today. Moving on from the understanding of individual images in the text as scaffolded by allusion to visual material, I will suggest that we also need to develop modes of approaching the Commedia as if its textual images were arranged in a fresco programme such as that found in the Arena Chapel, also known as the Scrovegni Chapel, in Padua. Art historians have established myriad links between disparate elements in the fresco cycles of the Scrovegni Chapel, arguing that Giotto’s use of colour and form would prompt viewers to look across the chancel arch, for instance, or might follow the line of an arm upward from a lower register to a higher register, to another narrative.⁵ Likewise, I propose, the Commedia invites the reader to make visual links between disparate, noncontiguous moments in the text. In this case, the text asks us to view its verbally articulated expanse of images with a set of observational tools that could be acquired from the practice of engaging with fresco cycles or programmes of mosaics in places of worship. Often, I will suggest, the tracing of gestures provides a key for establishing itineraries within the text that move in ways apart from the simple narrative procedure from one line to the next. Dante’s Commedia is a poem that is densely packed with fine-grained descriptions of gesture and bodily movement; it is for this reason that the poem has lent itself so readily to countless remediations in paintings, drawings, films,

³ Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition 1350–1450 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). ⁴ I am borrowing this term, as I will discuss at greater length further along, from Daniela Brogi, Un romanzo per gli occhi: Manzoni, Caravaggio e la fabbrica del realismo (Rome: Carocci, 2018), p. 38. ⁵ See Chapter 2 for full discussion of sources.

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and live performances. Gesture in the Commedia belongs to the hermeneutic domains of both the legible and the visible; at times, it is an iteration of what Dante describes in his poem as ‘visibile parlare’ (visible speech) (Purg. 10, 95). While this concept is laid out specifically on the terrace of pride in Purgatory, I suggest that this terminology can be weighed, in adapted ways, for thinking through gesture throughout the Commedia. Virgil describes his guidance of Dante as enacted through both words and signs (Purg. 27, 139); the poem, as a whole, shows that both categories offer significant possibilities not only for straightforward guidance but also for interpretative and affective engagement. Both words and signs rely on the human desire, and the human ability, to read those around us and to act on those readings. Bodily movement as described in the Commedia is designed, I will suggest, to forge interpretative communities with shared affects.

Defining gesture It is necessary to begin with a discussion of what we may take as gesture before proceeding any further, in order to identify precisely what we are examining in Dante’s work. Movements that we might identify as gestures are everywhere in Dante’s Commedia and their importance is clear in Dante’s other works as well.⁶ There is consistent understanding in Dante’s works that certain bodily signs accompany words and act on receivers in a similar way to words. To give one prominent example: at the opening of the Purgatorio, when Virgil needs to help Dante prepare himself to meet Cato, the text is explicit that first, Dante must take on a pose of reverence when he meets the guardian of Purgatory. In order to best arrange Dante’s bodily expression, Virgil uses not only words, but also physical manipulation, and bodily signs: Lo duca mio allor mi diè di piglio e, con parole e con mani e con cenni reverenti mi fé le gambe e ’l ciglio. (Purg. 1, 49–51)⁷ ⁶ Robin Kirkpatrick notes that Dante consistently pays attention to ‘the finest detail of movement and response’ in the shade bodies he describes. ‘Dante and the Body’ in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 236–53, 245. ⁷ ‘My leader took me firmly in his grip, / and—urging me with gestures, hands and words / to bend my brow and knee in reverence.’ The citations from the Commedia are from La Commedia, ed. Giorgio Inglese, 3 vols. (Rome: Carocci, 2016). All translations of the Commedia, unless otherwise stated, are by Robin Kirkpatrick as found in The Divine Comedy, 3 vols. (London: Penguin, 2006–7). Some translations have been altered slightly for literal meanings in descriptions of gestures.

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The word employed here to indicate bodily signs is ‘cenni’, and while these specific ‘cenni’ are not described, we are told that the result will be a reverent pose for Dante’s legs and brow. We easily fill in, or imagine, what the gestures and actions on Virgil’s part might be. The polysyndeton, ‘E con parole e con mani e con cenni’, reinforces the notion of Virgil’s solicitude, and the careful interrelation of Dante and Virgil’s bodies.⁸ Virgil models, shapes, and exhorts Dante’s reverence. It is clear that guidance for Dante, through Virgil, and subsequently Beatrice and Bernard, is understood to be accomplished as much through gesture as through word, a fact that the poem is keen to document. In Purgatorio 27, when Virgil declares Dante free to move of his own accord, he characterizes what he has done for Dante as follows: ‘Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno’ (‘No longer look to me for signs or word’, 139). In the same way, in Paradiso, Dante is described as seeking Beatrice’s guidance ‘o per parlare o per atto, segnato’ (‘to see in her some gesture, word, or sign’, Par. 18, 54). In Paradiso 30, she is described as having the ‘atto e voce di spedito duce’ (‘the gestures and voice of a decisive leader’ Par. 30, 37) Bernard, likewise, as Dante nears the final vision, enacts his final bit of guidance in the form of gesture: ‘Bernardo m’accennava, e sorridea, / perch’io guardassi suso’ (Par. 33, 49–50).⁹ Along with ‘cenno’, the term ‘atto’ is frequently used for gestures in the Commedia, as in the Convivio. Commenting on ‘Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona’, and particularly the lines: in lei discende la vertù divina sì come face in angelo che ’l vede; e qual donna gentil questo non crede, vada con lei e miri li atti suoi (Convivio III. 37–40),¹⁰

Dante explains speech and meaningful gesture as both, together, and equally, that which distinguishes humans from animals. In his words: è da sapere che solamente l’uomo intra li animali parla, ed ha reggimenti ed atti che si dicono razionali, però che solo elli ha in sé ragione. (III, vii, 9)¹¹ ⁸ Manfredi Porena describes it as ‘una premura quasi affannosa, espressa benissimo coi ripetuti e … e … e … del v. 50’, comment on Purg. 1, 49–51 in La Divina Commedia, ed. Manfredi Porena, 3 vols. (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1953–4). ⁹ ‘Now Bernard, smiling, made a sign to me / that I look up.’ ¹⁰ ‘Into her descends celestial power / As it does into an angel that sees him; / And if some gentle lady disbelieves this, / Let her walk with her and mark her gestures.’ ¹¹ ‘We should know that, among the animals, man alone speaks and has conduct and gestures which are called rational, because he alone has reason within himself.’

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While parrots may appear to speak, and other animals such as monkeys may appear to make ‘atti o vero reggimenti’ (‘perform gestures or possess bearing’), Dante responds to this potential objection that: non è vero che parlino né che abbiano reggimenti, però che non hanno ragione, dalla quale queste cose convegnono procedere; né è in loro lo principio di queste operazioni, né conoscono che sia ciò, né intendono per quello alcuna cosa significare, ma solo quello che veggiono e odono ripresentare. (III, vii, 9)¹²

The apparent gestures and words of these animals, he goes on, are like the mirror image of a real thing, a mere copy of human gestures and words, purely specular and deprived of any original intention or meaning. In this evaluation, human gestures seem to have equal signifying power to words. Along with listening to the words of the donna, Dante proposes keen attention to her ‘atti’: Li atti soavi ch’ella mostra altrui vanno chiamando Amor ciascuno a prova in quella voce che lo fa sentire. (ll. 45–7)¹³

He comments on the significance of these lines as follows: E i suoi atti, per la loro soavitade e per la loro misura, fanno amore disvegliare e risentire là dovunque è della sua potenza seminata per buona natura.¹⁴

Attention to her gestures, characterized by their sweetness, and their ‘measured’ qualities, awakens love in the worthy beholder. In his book on gesture, Adam Kendon defines the object of his study as ‘visible action as utterance’; it is ‘a label for actions that have the features of manifest deliberate expressiveness’.¹⁵ Such a definition fits well with Dante’s description ¹² ‘It is not true that they speak or that they possess bearing because they do not possess reason, from which these things must necessarily proceed; nor is the principle of these operations within them, nor do they know what they are, nor do they intend to signify anything by them, but rather only reproduce what they see and hear.’ ¹³ ‘The graceful gestures that she displays / Contend with each other in calling on Love / In terms of speech that make him listen.’ ¹⁴ ‘And her gestures, by their sweetness and their gracefulness, cause love to awaken and be felt wherever some part of its power is sown in a good nature.’ ¹⁵ Adam Kendon, Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 2 and 15.

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of the difference between human and animal gestures in the Convivio. Reason, intention, and the act of ‘significare’ distinguish human gestures. This is not to say, however, that Dante is uninterested in the act of reading bodies more broadly. While human ‘cenni’ and ‘reggimenti’ are language, working alongside words in the manifold processes of ‘significare’, the Commedia also frequently dwells on legible but not intentionally expressive bodily signs.¹⁶ Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana distinguishes between signa naturalia and signa data, in which the former may provide information, but are produced sine voluntate atque ullo appetitu significandi (‘without a wish or any urge to signify’). Signa data, conversely, are characterized by their voluntas significandi.¹⁷ This distinction, typically invoked for defining gesture, is important, but I have not taken it as a discriminating factor of inclusion or exclusion for the present study.¹⁸ In the pages that follow, I will take instances from the whole range of bodily signs in Dante’s works into account, for my focus is not on deciphering the intention or degree of intentionality of the gesturer but instead on exploring how Dante stages the reading of gestures as well as bodily signs more broadly, whether deliberate forms of expression or not. It is only in examining how bodily signs of all sorts are read that we can consider crucial questions of the agency of the reader or viewer in receiving and reacting to described expressive bodily movements. To this end, the bodily signs I will examine here under the vast rubric of the gesturality of the text may sometimes be gestures by the classic definition, but also postures, descriptions of carriage, gait, and so forth. It is only in this way that we can avoid transposing our own categories of gesture in a limiting sense in order to fully investigate Dante’s ‘atti’, ‘cenni’, and ‘reggimenti’ by means of which humans signify and perceive signification in his textual worlds.¹⁹ ¹⁶ For a broader definition of gesture that includes all the ways that human body conveys social meaning to the observer, see Keith Thomas, ‘Introduction’ in A Cultural History of Gesture, from Antiquity to the Present, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1993), pp. 1–14 (pp. 1–2). ¹⁷ On Dante’s knowledge of sign theory, see Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Dante’s Signs: An Introduction to Medieval Semiotics and Dante’ in Dante and the Middle Ages: Literary and Historical Essays, ed. John C. Barnes and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995), pp. 139–80, as well as Zygmunt G. Barański, Dante e i segni: Saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante Alighieri (Naples: Liguori, 2000). ¹⁸ Kendon and Burrow both take this as the main filter for their investigations. See J.A. Burrow, Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 3–4. ¹⁹ Thomas describes gesture as ‘the general carriage of the body’, ‘Introduction’ in A Cultural History of Gesture, p. 2. The present study does not propose to offer a comprehensive catalogue of gesture in Dante, but rather to examine a selection of gestural moments in light of their positioning in the works, particularly in the architecture of the Commedia, and in Dante’s visual contexts. For further gestures, see Burrow, Gestures and Looks; the chapter on gesture in Katherine Powlesland, Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ (Cambridge, Legenda, forthcoming 2022), and my ‘Gestural Persons’ in Dante’s Persons, pp. 34–82.

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Furthermore, many of the most productive stagings of gestures and their reception in the Commedia occur around gestures that throw into question the degree to which they can be understood as intentional acts of communication.²⁰ Smiles of amusement or pleasure, for instance, can be situated on the borders of intentional expression, as Dante so clearly shows when he depicts himself smiling despite himself at Statius’ declarations of love for Virgil:²¹ Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma; cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; ma caddi in via con la seconda soma. Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville, che mi scaldar, della divina fiamma onde sono allumati più di mille; dell’Eneïda, dico, la qual mamma fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando; sanz’ essa non fermai peso di dramma. E, per esser vivuto di là quando visse Virgilio, assentirei un sole più che non deggio al mio uscir di bando. (Purg. 21. 91–102)²²

Statius does not know that he is making his declarations in Virgil’s presence and Virgil does not wish that Dante should reveal his identity. To this end, Virgil uses an expressive gesture that is clearly intentional and legible to Dante: ‘Volser Virgilio a me queste parole / con viso che tacendo disse “Taci”’ (Purg. 21, 103–4).²³ Despite Virgil’s silence, his expression speaks clearly, as if in the form of words. However, while Dante manages to stay silent as commanded, his facial expressions are not so biddable: ma non può tutto la virtù che vuole, che riso e pianto son tanto seguaci ²⁰ For a discussion of the need to account for medieval communication more broadly, looking at non-verbal forms alongside verbal forms, see New Approaches to Medieval Communication, ed. Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999). ²¹ See also Burrow, Gestures and Looks, p. 161–2 on the treatment of voluntas significandi in this passage. ²² ‘My name was Statius to the people there. / I sang of Thebes and then of great Achilles, / but stumbled carrying that second load. / The seed my ardour sprang from was a spark / which warmed me through of that most sacred flame / from which a thousand, and yet more, are lit. / I’m speaking of the Aeneid—a mum / to me, to me my nurse in poetry. / Without that, I’d not weigh a single gram. / And could I live back then when Virgil lived, / I would agree to pass, beyond the due / that brought me out of exile, one year’s sun.’ ²³ ‘These words turned Virgil round to me—his look / saying, unspeakingly: “Be silent now!”’

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DANTE, ARTIST OF GESTURE ala passion di che ciascun si spicca, che men seguon voler ne’ più veraci. I’ pur sorrisi come l’uom ch’amicca; per che l’ombra si tacque, e riguardommi nelli occhi ove ’l sembiante più si ficca, e ‘Se tanto labore in bene assommi,’ disse, ‘perché la tua faccia testeso un lampeggiar di riso dimostrommi?’ (Purg. 21, 105–14)²⁴

While Dante makes it clear that he smiles despite his best efforts to control his expression, this moment demands our gestural reading when Statius immediately interprets that smile as a message, triggering a series of events. Unlike Virgil’s previous sign that Dante should be quiet, this smile happens against Dante’s will, but nonetheless ‘shows’ or ‘displays’ something to Statius. This will lead to Virgil giving permission for Dante to explain his smile, which did not communicate a clear meaning: ‘se cagion altra al mio rider credesti, / lasciala per non vera’ (127–8).²⁵ Words clarify the meaning of the smile in this case, which, unlike Virgil’s expression, does not speak for itself,²⁶ and would have been impossible to read without full knowledge of the identities and relationships of the people present. But, as this example shows, both categories of expression are there to be read, albeit in differing ways.²⁷ Our reading of such textual description of expression is necessarily visual and somatic. Even without thinking about it, we may instinctively visualize the expression or the gesture used by Virgil to impose silence on Dante in the face of Statius’ enthusiasms. Then Dante’s smile, and the effort to hide it. Then Statius’ sense of awkwardness, interrupted in the middle of sincere declarations of love for the poet who led him not only to become a poet himself, but ²⁴ ‘But will power can’t do everything it wills. / For tears and laughter follow on so close / to those emotions from which each act springs / that these least follow will in those most true. / And so I smiled, as though to give a hint. / At which the shade fell silent and just stared, / straight in my eyes where what we feel shows most. / “I wish that all your toil may come to good / Why did your features, though, display to me / just now,” he said, “that sudden flashing smile?”’ ²⁵ ‘If you suppose I’d other cause to smile, / put that aside.’ ²⁶ Elina Gertsman argues that the smiles on Gothic sculptures visible on church portals are ‘inevitably charged with ambiguity’, offering complexity of meaning to the viewer in that liminal space. See ‘The Facial Gesture: (Mis)Reading Emotion in Gothic Art’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 36.1 (2010): 28–46 (p. 41). ²⁷ This is not dissimilar from discussions of authorial intent and reader interpretation. Simone Marchesi speaks of this process in Dante as a collaboration between reader and text. I would suggest a similar collaboration is necessary for gesture to function. See Simone Marchesi, ‘“Intentio auctoris” tra Purgatorio XXII e Convivio. Poesia ed ermeneutica dantesca in movimento’ in Leggere Dante, ed. Lucia Battaglia Ricci (Ravenna: Longo, 2003), pp. 57–72.

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also to become a Christian. Then Dante’s own anxious expression, oscillating between silence and words, desperate to clear up the misunderstanding. The precision of Dante’s text succeeds in describing just what is necessary to stimulate our capacities to visualize or recreate the expressive three-way dialogue, and to draw on our affective engagement in the scene. The pivotal gestural drama of this episode was not lost on early illustrators of this canto. We may see, for instance, how the illustrator of this episode in the Egerton 943 Commedia of the British Library, produced in northern Italy (Emilia and the Veneto) around 1340, has given deft attention to the expressive and gestural details of the scene (Figure 0.1).²⁸ Statius’ enthusiasm is legible in the extension of his arm towards Dante and Virgil. Dante is between the two poets, and seems to be on the verge of gesturing towards Virgil, but Virgil’s eyes are turned sharply towards Dante, as if to admonish him to silence. Likewise, the Neapolitan manuscript held in the British Museum, Add. ms. 19587, shows a complicated interlocking set of hands and arms to stage the

Figure 0.1 Dante and Virgil meet Statius. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 100v (detail). ²⁸ f. 100v. The manuscript is available to view online. References to illustrations in this manuscript refer here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Egerton_MS_943. On this manuscript, see Anna Pegoretti, Indagine su un codice dantesco: La ‘Commedia’ Egerton 943 Della British Library (Pisa: Felici Editore, 2014). Pegoretti notes how the manuscript is attentive to emotions and to each small gesture described in the text in ‘Un Dante “domenicano”: La Commedia Egerton 943 della British Library’ in Dante Visualizzato: Carte Ridenti, ed. Rossend Arqués Corominas and Marcello Ciccuto (Florence: Cesati, 2017), pp. 127–42 (p. 130).

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silent interaction between Dante and Virgil, with Statius first shown extending his arms at a distance and then reaching upward to Virgil from a partial kneeling position. Dante indicates Virgil with both hands, while Virgil’s hands are poised to attenuate, one closed in on his body and the other arrayed with the palm towards Dante’s indicating hand.²⁹ Such limit cases, or bodily signs at the margins of what is generally considered gesture, will in fact be of particular interest for the present study. In the same way, blushes, or sudden pallor, normally excluded from considerations of gesture as ‘bodily symptoms’ rather than a sign intended to carry a message,³⁰ will also fall under the scope of our investigation. All bodily signs that appear in the text, no matter their ‘real-life’ conditions of voluntary or involuntary signs, are, by mere virtue of their presence in the text, there to be read. As such, every bodily sign described in a text takes on communicative value as gesture from the reader’s perspective. Often, as we have seen in the case of Statius’ pause at Dante’s smile, or, as I will discuss further on, the productive interpretative flutterings around sudden pallor, it is precisely those liminal gestural moments that generate engagement on the part of the viewer or reader. Gestures, Augustine explains, may be understood as verba visibilia, a term which is enormously resonant for Dante’s depiction of certain gestures as visibile parlare.³¹ On the terrace of the proud in Dante’s Purgatory, the Annunciation is presented to the penitents purging their vice. It appears in the form of a sculpted bas-relief, as an example of the virtue, humility, that opposes the vice in question. In this ekphrasis of an imagined, divinely authored work of art, the bas-relief of Gabriel and the Virgin is described as seeming to speak through the ‘atti’ that each display: dinanzi a noi pareva sì verace, quivi intagliato in un atto soave, che non sembiava imagine che tace; giurato si saria ch’el dicesse ‘Ave’ perché iv’era imaginata quella ch’ad aprir l’alto amore volse la chiave: ²⁹ The manuscript is Neapolitan, of c. 1370. The image appears on 96r. The manuscript is available to view at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_19587 See Peter Brieger, Millard Meiss, and Charles S. Singleton (eds.), Illuminated Manuscripts of the ‘Divine Comedy’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 390. Holkham Hall 514, p.97 (Italian, third quarter of the fourteenth century) also shows Statius with a similarly enthusiastic extended arm, though the interaction between Dante and Virgil is less visible. ³⁰ See Burrow, Gestures and Looks, pp. 3–4. ³¹ De Doctrina, II, 5.

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e avea in atto impressa esta favella ‘Ecce ancilla Deï’, propriamente come figura in cera si suggella. (Purg. 10, 37–45)³²

This, of course, is the supreme example of the utmost transparency and communicative power of gesture. The gestures of Gabriel speak the word ‘Ave’. Mary’s gestures speak her proclamation of humble acceptance, ‘Ecce ancilla Deï’. The words ring through the image, uncontaminated by imperfections in the gesturing subjects or in the medium that depicts them. In general, human gestures are muddier than this, muddled by our multiple desires and affects at work in any given moment. And in these bas-reliefs sculpted by God, there is a perfection of image that has not fallen away from the thing it depicts, while usually the media we rely on to transmit a gesture not witnessed first-hand will reduce the gesture’s legibility or expressiveness. In fact, Dante notes that ‘Colui che mai non vide cosa nova / produsse esto visibile parlare, / novello a noi perché qui non si trova’ (Purg. 10, 94–6).³³ So, in this analysis, unlike Augustine’s verba visibilia, Dante’s visibile parlare is not exactly the correct term for how gestures are read on a quotidian basis, but stands instead for a perfection of gesturer and image-making generally unattainable to human experience. Gestures are usually not quite visibile parlare.

The shape of this study The six chapters of the book each examine Dante’s gestural strategies within the context of the visual. I suggest that these strategies have two main purposes: first, for aligning (or opposing) characters in each canticle with recognizable devotional models, and second, for creating moments of gestural recall between disparate moments in the text in order to accumulate a density of affective material intended to prompt the reader into devotional and social action, and into a celebration of susceptibility, into the visible condition of being affected by the proximity and presence of one’s neighbour. The book ³² ‘Appeared so truthfully before us now, / carved in a gesture of pure gentleness, / he did not seem an image keeping silence. / In truth, one might have said he spoke the “Ave”. / For in that image was the one who turned / the key that opened out the utmost love. / And from her stance and bearing there shone out / (exactly as an imprint sealed in wax) / “Ecce ancilla Dei”, word for word.’ See Teodolinda Barolini, ‘Re-presenting What God Presented: The Arachnean Art of Dante’s Terrace of Pride’, Dante Studies, 105 (1987), pp. 43–62. I will further discuss art on the terrace of pride in the next chapter. ³³ ‘The One who sees no thing that’s new to Him / produced this form of discourse visible— / so new to us, so fresh since not found here.’

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does not seek to document exhaustively the innumerable examples of gestures in the Commedia or, even less, in Dante’s works more broadly. Rather, I have sought here to generate possibilities for further work, and to focus on proposing methodologies and working through a selected number of case studies in order to forward the exploration of the possibilities these new methodologies might offer. The first chapter, ‘Reading Bodies in Motion’, sets out medieval contextual evidence for understanding how Dante might understand reader or viewer engagement with gesture and bodily movement as depicted in visual or textual sources. Departing from gesture studies more broadly, I investigate how gestures and bodily signs appear in Dante’s works and how Dante understands those gestures to be legible and agentially powerful in readers’ imaginations and memories. I show in this introductory chapter how bodily knowledge cannot be separated from cultural codification and from specific culturally and temporally defined sets of visual vocabularies, taking examples from Dante’s Vita nova and his Inferno. The second chapter is entitled ‘Dante as Visual Artist’. There has been much recent work aimed at studying how medieval programmes of visual arts were designed to inspire penitential action. Picking up from that work, this second chapter sets out a new methodology for drawing parallels between such structured viewing and experience of visual art and the ways in which gestural episodes are presented in the Commedia within programmes or itineraries through the architectural space of the poem. The chapter considers Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel, the mosaics of the Baptistery of San Giovanni of Florence, and other programmes of visual art alongside discussions of medieval devotional practices enabled by texts such as The Meditations on the Life of Christ and Dante’s Commedia. If we take the Commedia as a work also to be viewed, I argue, then new methodologies for reading texts as visual programmes can emerge from dialogue with visual culture studies. The third chapter, ‘Fixity and Flexibility’, delves further into the work of reading the Commedia visually. This chapter reads the ways in which the gestures and poses depicted in Inferno as reflections of human comportments in their own time are thrown into question by the ‘new’ ethical and spiritual systems of Purgatorio. Farinata’s infernal unbending and unyielding posture in the face of his neighbour’s suffering will be visually countered, again and again, with models of inclination towards the suffering of others in Purgatorio and Paradiso. Ante-purgatory, I suggest, is a key site where two gestural practices that correspond to diverging ethical attitudes come into contrast. Focusing on Purgatorio 5 and 6, this chapter examines choreographies of appeal and

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response that model different ideals of human virtue poised between classical and Christian examples in visual and literary art. The fourth chapter, ‘Modelling Gestural Virtues in Dante’s Purgatorio’, turns to Purgatory proper. Penance, in each instance, is often enacted through gestural and postural practices that Dante briefly takes part in along with the shades he encounters. Reading and fully engaging with these penitential practices is challenging work and, as I will seek to show in this chapter, kinesic visualization and gestural elaboration may offer the most direct ways in to what the text presents. The chapter focuses on the examples of mildness on the terrace of wrath and the penitential actions of the gluttons. What becomes of this mode of inclination towards the other in Paradiso? In the fifth chapter, ‘A symmetrical Affections’, I consider the asymmetries between Dante’s limited capacity to see and to understand and Beatrice’s divinely participatory capacity. In Paradiso, where the luminosity of the souls renders them almost invisible in any detail to the narrating eye, the reader’s attention is sharply focused on the dynamism of souls reaching towards Dante with affection. This chapter reads these gestures of affection in Dante’s text with Botticelli’s drawings as commentary, a commentary that takes those gestures as the exclusive subject for the comprehension of the Paradiso and the work of vision that takes place there. The sixth and final chapter, ‘Heavenly Proximities and Contagions’, considers the issue of affective transfer as depicted in the Commedia, focusing on the highlighting of changing affective atmospheres and moods. I consider the affective leaps in Paradiso 9 in the context of group formation, placing the mechanisms of reiterated affective contrasts against the contagious effect of blushes in Purgatorio 33 and Paradiso 27. The blushing passages, describing a sort of involuntary somatic marker at the boundaries of gesture, simulate the possibility of the transfer of bodily states. The passages describe the overflow of emotion from one individual to another, even as they attempt to propagate that overflow of emotion into the reader.

1 Reading Bodies in Motion Gesture between disciplines Gesture is located between the visible and the enunciable, and therefore provokes real difficulties for methodologies and terminologies. A study of gesture must, of necessity, work between different disciplines, and scholars of literature, if they wish to engage with gesture, must borrow from disciplines more accustomed to dealing with the visible. Dealing with gesture in text, as I seek to do, involves a dynamic critical mode, moving from text to conceptualized movements and visual contexts, back to text. As film scholars Ana Hedberg Olenina and Irina Schulzki point out, gesture studies must always raise the problem of mediation, or, in other words, how visual and textual media capture, modify, transmit, and disseminate movement.¹ How does text account for bodily movement and the ways in which we respond to bodily movement? This is all the more difficult to assess since we respond to bodily movement in part through forms of knowledge that we cannot readily articulate. In the following pages, I will discuss a selection of recent critical approaches to gesture from various areas of study as well as medieval discussions of bodily signs. In so doing, I will assemble a methodology that allows us to analyze how Dante’s gestural poetry engages with visual imagery and corporeal knowledge to political, ethical, and spiritual ends. Film studies in particular has recently gone through what is now called ‘the gestural turn’ in contemporary film theory. While Giorgio Agamben’s Note sul gesto came out in 1992, it was not translated into its English version, Notes on Gesture, until 2000, triggering a wave of fresh scholarship. Against Ernst H. Gombrich’s claim that ‘art arrests movement’, thus creating a divide between the gestures we see in real life and those we see represented in art, which are

¹ Ana Hedberg Olenina and Irina Schulzki, ‘Mediating Gesture in Theory and Practice’ in Mise en geste. Studies of Gesture in Cinema, ed. Ana Hedberg Olenina and Irina Schulzki, special issue of Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 5 (2017), DOI: http://dx. doi.org/10.17892/app.2017.0005.100. Dante, Artist of Gesture. Heather Webb, Oxford University Press. © Heather Webb (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.003.0002

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pre-formed by ritual,² Agamben insists that paintings like the Mona Lisa or Las Meninas ‘could be seen not as immovable and eternal forms, but as fragments of a gesture or as stills of a lost film’. He speaks of a ‘paralyzing power whose spell we need to break […] continuously at work in every image’, ‘a silent invocation calling for the liberation of the image into gesture’ arising from ‘the entire history of art’.³ Cinema, Agamben claims, has its center in gesture and not in the image; it is for this reason that cinema belongs to the realm of ethics and politics, and not merely aesthetics.⁴ What of literary gestures? It seems natural to speak of literary gestures as ‘images’, but are they more akin to stills, such as paintings, or to the dynamic gestures in film? Unlike paintings, texts can describe a full range of movement, like the shaking of a head that Gombrich notes a painting cannot approach.⁵ But how much can be conveyed without the visible image? How visible can a gesture be in a text? Much work on kinesis in literature has been led by the research on kinesis in paintings and photographs by Ellen Spolsky. Spolsky defines ‘kinesic intelligence’ as ‘our human capacity to discern and interpret body movements, body postures, gestures, and facial expressions in both real situations as well as in our reception of visual art’.⁶ Our own bodily knowledge allows us to interpret the bodily movements of others in real life; it’s easy to see how this can extend to film. Spolsky argues that this knowledge is active in our reception of visual art more broadly. The next step, as critics such as Guillemette Bolens have argued, is that this same process can be extended to the reception of literature. When we read about someone performing a specific gesture, our ‘kinesic intelligence’, to use Spolsky’s term, may be triggered, just as it is when we see someone performing the gesture.⁷ A collaboration between a literary scholar, Hannah Wojciehowski, and a neuroscientist, Vittorio Gallese, has suggested that techniques of embodied ² E.H. Gombrich, ‘Ritualized Gesture and Expression in Art’, Philological Transactions of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences, 251 (1966): 393–401 (p. 396), DOI https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1966. 0025. ³ Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics, trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 55–6. ⁴ Agamben, Means Without End, p. 55. ⁵ Gombrich, ‘Ritualized Gesture’, p. 395. ⁶ Ellen Spolsky, ‘Elaborated Knowledge: Reading Kinesis in Pictures’, Poetics Today, 17 (1996): 157– 80 (p. 157). ⁷ Guillemette Bolens, The Style of Gestures: Embodiment and Cognition in Literary Narrative (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), p. 1; on mirror neurons, the mirror mechanism, and embodied simulation, see Massimo Ammaniti and Vittorio Gallese, The Birth of Intersubjectivity: Psychodynamics, Neurobiology, and the Self (New York: Norton, 2014), pp. 10–20. They explain that ‘[w]atching someone grasping a cup of coffee, biting an apple, or kicking a football activates in our brain the same cortical regions that would be activated if we were doing the same’, p. 12.

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representation in art, whether textual or visual, allow readers (or viewers) to find partial matches with their own sensory experiences and memories, pairing this somatic memory with new concepts introduced by the text and thus producing representations of things that might otherwise have been unimaginable.⁸ The textually new, associated in a surprising way with reference to a familiar corporeal sensation, can create a particularly resonant concept. I would argue that we can see this pairing of somatic description with abstract complexity at work in the Commedia, and in fact, see it employed so systematically that it seems to constitute a narrative strategy.⁹ There are a number of questions that will need to be addressed along the way: are there certain conditions to these effects? How detailed does the description of the gesture need to be? Does the textual referent need to invoke a codified gesture, pre-formed by ritual, or does it need to invoke our personal corporeal experience? What does it take to engage our kinesic intelligence? If a text merely states that a character waves to another, it seems unlikely to trigger much cognitive work on the part of the reader. There must, I will suggest, be something about the described gesture that sticks, either because of a certain resonance with canonical visual referents in a similar or in an opposed context, or because there is something fundamentally awkward about the gesture that, while described with somatic density, in fact does not chime with the corporeal commonplaces of our daily gestural lives. There are other ways that described gestures in texts may push themselves to the fore, often in correlation with particular moments of intensity in the text.¹⁰ This book will examine how and why certain gestures in Dante draw attention to themselves, how they ‘stick’ cognitively, and how an accumulation of the cataloged experience of these specific gestures works to cumulative effect. This of course raises the necessary question as to how we can, reading in our own time, speak of the resonance of gestures when so many centuries divide us from the description of the gesture. Gestures are not necessarily intuitive across time and space, as an example from Purgatorio reveals.¹¹ When Dante and Virgil encounter the group of excommunicates in Purgatorio 3, Virgil asks them to indicate where a ‘corpo uman’, a human body (Purg. 3, 95), might ⁸ Vittorio Gallese and Hannah Wojciehowski ‘How Stories Make Us Feel: Toward an Embodied Narratology’, California Italian Studies, 2.1 (2011), DOI: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3jg726c2. ⁹ For discussion of the connection between gestures and abstractions in the literary text, see Bolens, The Style of Gestures, p. 9. ¹⁰ Lucia Ruprecht, in her study on gestural imaginaries in dance, considers gestures that ‘no longer disappear into their everyday use’, p. 36, Gestural Imaginaries: Dance and Cultural Theory in the Early Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). ¹¹ See, for instance, the study by David Efron, Gesture, Race and Culture (The Hague: Moulton, 1972).

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ascend. Their response is described as comprehensible through both words and gestures: e quella gente degna ‘Tornate’, disse, ‘intrate innanzi dunque’, coi dossi de le man faccendo insegna. (Purg. 3, 100–2)¹²

It is a gesture still used in Italy today, but one that is not recognizable to many non-Italian readers.¹³ An Italian reader will recall, as they read, whether consciously or not, times when someone has made this gesture to signal to them to go back or times when they have made the gesture to direct someone else. The gesture will have a certain semantic and affective density that accrues from this accumulation of memories triggered by the specificity of Dante’s description, which is not simply ‘signaling to us to go back’, which would have been adequate for the purposes of narrative advancement, but instead provides precise detail, ‘coi dossi delle man faccendo insegna’. This gesture is still used today, so it is enough to be Italian to have experience of it. But other gestures that appear in the text require particularly medieval contextualization. As Spolsky puts it, gestures are situated on the border between biological and cultural knowledge.¹⁴ While Keith Thomas, rather optimistically, proclaims that ‘to interpret and account for a gesture is to unlock the whole social and cultural system of which it is a part’,¹⁵ a notion that speaks volumes to our interest in interrogating the gestures we find documented in the Commedia and elsewhere, we must accept, I think, that some of the intrigue of attempting to view medieval gestures is that we do so from the position of both an insider and an outsider. There is some level of bodily or biological knowledge that allows us, often, to replicate the gesture physically, to experience it somatically. But we cannot see it as a medieval viewer would have seen it, mediated through different accretions of visual vocabularies and resonances. As Jean-Claude Schmitt points out, the medieval period, as our own, would have had myriad different ‘gestural communities’.¹⁶ The gestures that Dante ¹² ‘And these honoured folk / replied: ‘Turn back! Go on ahead of us’, / and signalled this to us with hands reversed’. ¹³ See Robert Hollander, gloss on Purgatorio 3, 101–2. ¹⁴ Spolsky, ‘Elaborated Knowledge’, p. 160. ¹⁵ Keith Thomas, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. ¹⁶ Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘The rationale of gestures in the West’ in A Cultural History of Gesture, pp. 59–70, (p. 61).

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describes are placed so prominently in the text in the assumption that the reader is part of the author’s gestural community, or at least an adjacent gestural community. Throughout this book, I will seek out some relevant contexts for our gaps in cultural knowledge, acknowledging all the while that our capacity to recuperate the full range of resonances of any specific gesture is necessarily limited.¹⁷ At the same time, I’d like to stress that we are not seeking a ‘decoding’ of most gestures. Many gestures are ‘sticky’, cognitively, because they are not easily decoded and dismissed; they cannot be translated into a single unambiguous verbal statement or unequivocal meaning. Their ambiguity can be their virtue, as it is precisely this ambiguity that generates response and engagement.

How do we respond to gesture? This study seeks out medieval, textually based evidence for understanding how a thinker like Dante might understand reader/viewer engagement with bodily movement depicted in visual or textual sources, working from the assumption that bodily knowledge cannot be separated from cultural codification and from specific culturally and temporally defined sets of visual vocabularies.¹⁸ The question with which we must begin is the following: when Dante describes bodily movement, as he does frequently, and in highly detailed ways throughout the Commedia, what does he understand that he is communicating to his reader? Today, neuroscientists are studying the mechanisms with which the actions of others are mapped onto the cerebral sensory-motor and visceral-motor representations of observers.¹⁹ Humans are constantly, consciously and subconsciously, seeking to understand the responses of those around us. We use a number of cues that include what others say, but also, crucially, our observations of the bodies of those around us. This understanding is intuitive. Vittorio ¹⁷ Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘The Ethics of Gesture’ in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, ed. Michel Feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, 3 vols. (New York: Zone, 1989), vol. 2, pp. 128–47 (p. 129). For a comprehensive history of gesture, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1990). ¹⁸ Tracing the contours of the cultural history of gesture in medieval Italy in full goes beyond the scope of this study. Throughout the book, I will seek out what have emerged for me as some of the most immediate contexts for the gestures in Dante’s works. I refer the interested reader to a broader set of contexts available in the works of Jean-Claude Schmitt, especially his La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval. ¹⁹ See, for examples of the ways in which this research is being applied to film, Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra, ‘Corpo a corpo. Simulazione incarnata e naturalizzazione dell’esperienza filmica’, Psicobiettivo (2014), DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.3280/PSOB2014-001012 and Lo schermo empatico. Cinema e neuroscienze (Cortina: Milano, 2015).

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Gallese and Hannah Wojciehowski refer to this as a ‘direct form of action understanding … when we see someone acting or expressing a given emotional or somatosensory state, we can directly grasp its content without the need to reason explicitly about it’.²⁰ As we will see, Dante is likewise convinced that we do have an innate human capacity to read the ‘content’ of human movements. Furthermore, Dante expresses an understanding of the mechanisms of bodily movement that leads him to construct descriptions and narrative passages that are primed to capture the reader’s attention and to stimulate an affective reaction that is intended, I will suggest, to push the reader toward imitative or oppositional modes, towards what might be penitential or political action. A first example of some of Dante’s earliest articulations of the ways in which human emotion is rendered legible to observers through bodily movements comes in the Vita nova, when the protagonist attends a wedding feast, not knowing that Beatrice will be present: E nel fine del mio proponimento mi parve sentire uno mirabole tremore incominciare nel mio petto da la sinistra parte e distendersi di subito per tutte le parti del mio corpo. Allora dico ched io poggiai la mia persona simulatamente ad una pintura la quale circundava questa magione; e temendo non altre si fosse accorto del mio tremare, levai li occhi, e mirando le donne, vidi tra loro la gentilissima Beatrice. (Vn 14.4)²¹

This brief passage shows us an already vast mapping of the relations between sensation, perception, and physical movement in a single subject. Dante foregrounds his concern over the potential perception by observers of the externalization of an internal sensation. What Dante describes in this instance is a sensation that derives not from visual perception or any of the other senses as we might list them today, but initially from Beatrice’s very presence.²² ²⁰ Gallese and Wojciehowski, ‘How stories make us feel’, p. 12. ²¹ ‘No sooner did I make this suggestion than I thought I sensed the appearance of a marvelous trembling that started on the left side of my chest and spread rapidly throughout my entire body. Then I had to prop myself, surreptitiously, against one of the pictures that ran around the walls of this house; and fearing that someone might have noticed my shaking, I raised my eyes, and looking around at the women, among them I saw that most gracious of creatures, Beatrice’. Vita nuova, Rime ed. Donato Pirovano and Marco Grimaldi (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2015). All translations of the Vita nova, unless otherwise stated, are by Andrew Frisardi as found on Columbia University’s Digital Dante website, available at https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/la-vita-nuova-frisardi/. ²² On the complexity of medieval conceptualizations of the senses, see Rethinking the Medieval Senses, ed. Stephen G. Nichols, Andreas Kablitz, and Alison Calhoun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

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The ‘tremore’ that Dante describes is an extreme movement of ‘spiriti’, subtle agents formed of a mixture of blood in the heart of the subject and inhaled air. These ‘spiriti’, mediums for the incorporeal soul, enact the processes of animation and sensation; here, in their reaction to an external stimulus, they rush from the heart that has perceived Beatrice’s presence to every part of the poet’s body. The ‘spiriti’ constitute the traffic between inner and outer worlds, circulating from the individual body into encounter with other entities and returning to the subject.²³ While the presence of Beatrice has miraculous power, Dante expands here upon known sensory processes to imagine an extremity of sensory experience from within his own human limitations. The ‘spiriti’ react to Beatrice’s physical proximity by moving from Dante’s heart with such force that a trembling takes over his entire body. This involuntary movement results in voluntary action, as Dante leans on the wall to support his suddenly weakened limbs. He then looks up to be sure that no one ‘si fosse accorto del mio tremare’ (‘might have noticed my shaking’). He knows that observation of such trembling would be immediately legible to an observer as manifesting a certain affective state although he does not feel the need to name it here. Dante thinks of the heart as the principal receptor for perception and sensation of varied kinds. It is via the heart that the soul conducts internal movement and initiates subsequent external bodily movement.²⁴ Dante’s understanding of this complex nexus of the human person, regulating the intersection between sensation and gesture, can be glossed, though not fully explained, with Aristotelian lines of thought.²⁵ In the De motu animalium, for example, Aristotle notes that perceptions, imagination, or thoughts may cause the heart to be chilled or heated and cause the connate pneuma to expand or contract. These externally imperceptible small movements may lead to larger

²³ For a more in-depth discussion of the action of the ‘spiriti’ in Dante and in medieval thought more broadly, see James J. Bono, ‘Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life’, Traditio, 40 (1984): 91–130 and my The Medieval Heart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). ²⁴ Convivio III, ii, 11, in Le opere di Dante, ed. F.B. Ageno (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2012): ‘Dico adunque che lo Filosofo nel secondo dell’Anima, partendo le potenze di quella, dice che l’anima principalmente hae tre potenze, cioè vivere, sentire e ragionare; e dice anche muovere; ma questa si può col sentire fare una, però che ogni anima che sente, o con tutti i sensi o con alcuno solo, si muove: sì che muovere è una potenza congiunta col sentire’. (‘I say then that in the second book of On the Soul, the Philosopher, in distinguishing its powers, asserts that the soul has three principal powers: namely life, sensation, and reason; he also mentions motion, but this can be included with sensation, since every soul that senses, either with all the senses or with one alone, also has motion, so that motion is a power conjoined with sensation’.) ²⁵ See Sonia Gentili, ‘Due definizioni di “cuore” nel “Convivio” di Dante: “secreto dentro”, “parte dell’anima e del corpo” (II, 6, 2)’, Lettere italiane, 54.1 (2002): 3–36.

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scale expressive movements and eventually contribute to intentional action.²⁶ The scale of resulting bodily movement may be read as proceeding from involuntary to voluntary. As one moves along this spectrum, bodily signs and gestures become potentially more and more legible to witnesses as expressive. Already, in this case, ‘molte di queste donne, accorgendosi della mia trasfigurazione, si cominciaro a maravigliare, e ragionando si gabbavano di me con questa gentilissima’ (Vn 14.7).²⁷ Throughout the Commedia, Dante outlines a range of examples of varying levels of ability to read the movements of others and to engage or respond in fitting ways with the individuals in question. Dante uses physical movement and expression not only to communicate, but also to create possible models that can prompt meditation or mirrored bodily states, and thus also potentially stimulate specific affective or spiritual states in the observer. We may observe the processes of both interpretation and the conscious utilization of bodily movement and gesture in Inferno 3:

Queste parole di colore oscuro vid’ïo scritte al sommo d’una porta; per ch’io: ‘Maestro, il senso lor m’è duro’. Ed elli a me, come persona accorta: ‘Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto; ogni viltà convien che qui sia morta. Noi siàn venuti al loco ov’io t’ho detto che tu vedrai le genti dolorose c’hanno perduto il ben dell’intelletto’. E poi che la sua mano ala mia puose con lieto volto, ond’ io mi confortai, mi mise dentro alle segrete cose. (Inf. 3, 10–21)²⁸

²⁶ De motu animalium 7, 701b24–32, 7–9, and 10. These ideas are digested in various sources closer to Dante, such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. See Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 34. ²⁷ ‘Many of these women, noticing my transfiguration, started to wonder over it, and as they talked with one another they and this most gracious of women were making fun of me’. ²⁸ ‘These were the words that—written in dark tones—/ I saw there, on the summit of a door./ I turned: “Their meaning, sir, for me is hard”. / And he in answering (as though he understood): / “You needs must here surrender all your doubts. / All taint of cowardice must here be dead. / We now have come where, as I have said, you’ll see / in suffering the souls of those who’ve lost / the good that intellect desires to win”. / And then he placed his hand around my own, / he smiled, to give me some encouragement, / and set me on to enter secret things’.

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As in the passage from the Vita nova, we see that the adjective ‘accorto’ is used to describe the ability to read the emotions of others. Here, Virgil has a verbal cue as well, from Dante’s words, but the text deftly describes a dialog that is gestural as well as verbal. Virgil reacts to Dante’s fear not only with words, but with legible gestures, taking Dante’s hand and showing a ‘lieto volto’, at which Dante confirms that he is comforted.²⁹ What are the assumptions that govern such bodily codes for Dante? How does he understand bodies to show (or hide) thought, spiritual states, and emotions? How does he imagine that observers read these signals? The legibility of human bodies derives from attention to the interaction of souls with the environment through the mediation of bodily movement. What is visible to an observer is the inbetweenness of reaction to perception. In the case of Dante’s tremore, a potentially visible physical reaction of trembling took over Dante’s body involuntarily, while willed action, acting on the affect in the wake of perception, is often visible as performance, as when Dante leans on the wall in an attempt to hide his sudden weakness, or when Virgil takes Dante’s hand and presents a smiling face. Each of these gestures and bodily signs is a response: Dante’s trembling responds to Beatrice’s presence; Virgil’s gestures respond to Dante’s fear. In Inferno 4, Dante character’s ability to read bodily signs accurately is brought into question: ‘Or discendiam qua giù nel cieco mondo’, cominciò il poeta tutto smorto. ‘Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo’. E io, che del color mi fui accorto, dissi: ‘Come verrò, se tu paventi che suoli al mio dubbiare esser conforto?’ (13–18)³⁰

Here, Dante notices Virgil’s pale color (‘mi fui accorto’). The same word that was used in the Vita nova and in Inferno 3 to denote the capacity to read bodily signs recurs here. As Aquinas notes, one may read a person’s internal thoughts ‘per aliqua corporalia signa’ (‘by certain corporeal signs’): The possibility [of reading corporeal signs] is most evident when a man is transported towards some passion due to his interior thoughts; if this passion ²⁹ See Boccaccio’s commentary on how a leader’s face can condition those who follow them. Comm. on Inf. 3, 19–20. ³⁰ ‘“Let us descend”, the poet now began,/ “and enter this blind world”. His face was pale. / “I shall go first. Then you come close behind”. / I was aware of his altered colour. / “How can I come, when you”, I said, “my strength / in every time of doubt, are terrified?”’

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is vehement, it is reflected in some way in his external aspect, by means of which it may be perceived even by the most crude minds, so, for example, timid people become pale, while those who feel shame turn suddenly red, as the Philosopher says in the fourth book of Ethics.³¹

But Dante’s interpretation, Virgil explains, is, in fact, a misreading: L’angoscia delle genti che son qua giù nel viso mi dipigne quella pièta che tu per téma senti. (Inf. 4, 19–21)³²

A pallid face, unaccompanied by words, is harder to read than one might expect, but those who perceive sudden pallor will always be compelled to attempt a reading. It is precisely the case that Aquinas puts forth as the most obvious that Dante seeks to make us reconsider here. An expression or alteration in the face can correspond to various affects and sensations, and here Dante shows us this fundamental ambiguity that always requires the active work of attention and interpretation. This is a problem that Dante first stresses in the Vita nova, in the early part of the narrative, when Beatrice is still living. Dante recounts that he was struck by a ‘dolorosa infermitade’ (‘painful illness’, Vn 23.1). Weakened by fever, he suffers from a sort of hallucination: ‘mi giunse uno sì forte smarrimento, che chiusi gli occhi e cominciai a travagliare come farnetica persona’,³³ in which he has an apocalyptic vision of Beatrice’s death. The women caring for him see the pallor of Dante’s face and fear for his life. In the canzone that Dante writes upon his recovery, entitled, ‘Donna pietosa e di novella etate’ (‘A woman green in years, compassionate’, Vn 23), he seeks to explain, hiding Beatrice’s name, that his anguish and the visible sign of his pallor was not for himself, but for the idea that his lady must, one day, die. But shame comes into it as well. When ³¹ Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de malo, q. 16 a. 8 co.: ‘quod maxime manifestum est, cum ex interioribus cogitationibus homo ducitur in aliquam passionem; quae si fuerit vehemens, etiam in exteriori apparentia habet aliquod indicium, per quod potest etiam a grossioribus deprehendi; sicut timentes pallescunt, verecundati autem erubescunt, ut philosophus dicit in IV Ethic’. ³² ‘“It is the agony”, he answered me, / “of those below that paints my features thus – / not fear, as you suppose it is, but pity”’. ³³ ‘Such powerful turmoil came over me that I closed my eyes and started to suffer like someone in a delirium, imagining things’.

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he awakes or returns from his dark premonition, as he recounts in the prose, he pronounces the name of his beloved that he has so carefully kept secret: sı´ mi si cessò la forte fantasia entro in quello punto ch’io volea dire: ‘O Beatrice, benedetta sie tu’, e già detto avea ‘O Beatrice’, quando riscotendomi apersi li occhi, e vidi ch’io ero ingannato; e con tutto ch’io chiamasse questo nome, la mia boce era sı´ rotta dal singulto del piangere, che queste donne non mi pottero intendere, secondo il mio parere; e avvegna ch’io mi vergognassi molto, tuttavia per alcuno ammonimento d’Amore mi rivolsi a loro. (Vn 23.13)³⁴

In the canzone, Dante attributes his pallor to his ‘angoscia’ (‘distress’, 16) at the ‘nova fantasia’, (‘baffling fantasy’, 13) the ‘vano imaginare’ (‘unreal vision-scene’, 44) of Beatrice’s death, but also describes his ‘vista vergognosa’ (‘humiliation pressed / across my face’, 18) as he almost gave away Beatrice’s name upon awakening from his dark vision. This multi-faceted pallor, caught between anguish and shame, is misread by the women who attempt to comfort him as a potential sign of his own death: ‘Elli era tale a veder mio colore, / che facea ragionar di morte altrui’. (Vn 23.20, ll.21–2).³⁵ The urge to interpret bodily changes is instinctual, but without all the necessary contextual information, viewers often run the risk of making errors. Bodily signs speak to relations; they only rarely express individual states. Dante’s emotional encounter with Beatrice’s imagined death is misread as a symptom of his own deathly state. Pallor and pietà are linked both here and in Inferno 4, and, in both cases, are linked in complicated constellations of staged misreadings. One cannot always see the agent that triggers a body’s reaction, and this hidden dialog is key for reading bodily signs of all kinds. Bodies make signs within, and in response to, relations with people who may be present or absent. It is impossible to begin to read a bodily sign in abstraction; the reader must find a way to see, or better, participate in, a network of relations. Gestures, as Schmitt puts it, permit the gesturer to confirm belonging to a group. They can also express hierarchies.³⁶ But, most importantly, a person gesturing is never alone. Their interlocutor may not be visible to an observer, ³⁴ ‘My powerful fantasy ceased at the very moment when I was about to say, “O Beatrice, blessed are you”; and I had already said, “O Beatrice”, when, starting suddenly awake, I opened my eyes and saw that I had been deceived. And for all I called on this name, my voice was so broken by sobbing that these women could not understand me, as it seemed to me; and although I felt thoroughly ashamed, by some admonition of Love I faced them’. ³⁵ ‘My color at that point was such to see, / it made them whisper death was on my brow’. ³⁶ Schmitt, ‘The rationale of gestures’, p. 61.

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as in the case of a person at prayer, or in the cases of Dante and Virgil who are intensely feeling the presence of a distant person or persons, but no one gestures alone. Reading gesture entails reading relations. As I noted above, there is a specific kind of attention (‘accortezza’) that Dante associates with being able to read such hidden dialogs that are manifest in gestures. We might further consider the interactions with the devils in Inferno 21, when Dante accuses Virgil of not being adequately alert to the devil’s facial expressions. Malacoda’s promise: ‘costor sian salvi infino all’altro scheggio / che tutto intero va sovra le tane’ (Inf. 21, 125–6)³⁷ is meaningless, given that the ‘scheggio’, or bridge that is referenced, does not exist. Dante correctly fears a trap and asks Virgil why he is not paying attention to certain non-verbal expressions: ‘Se tu sè sì accorto come suoli, non vedi tu ch’e’ digrignan li denti e con le ciglia ne minaccian duoli?’ (Inf. 21, 130–2)³⁸

Dante has accurately read the danger through a close examination of the devils’ gestures and facial expressions, while Virgil has trusted their words. There has been much discussion amongst Dante critics about the extent of Virgil’s failings in reading the devils, as well as how Virgil’s proclaimed capacity to read Dante’s mind works: ‘s’i’ fossi di piombato vetro, / l’imagine di fuor tua non trarrei / più tosto a me, che quella dentro ’mpetro’ (Inf. 23, 25–7).³⁹ Virgil, full of virtue, is oblivious to signs of betrayal, signs that Dante seems to recognize easily. For our purposes, we can take this passage to note the importance of being ‘accorto’, understood as attentiveness to gesture and facial expression and the capacity to interpret these signs as part of a silent dialog, between conspiring devils in this case, but more generally in any human interaction. Aquinas points out that the very best observers of human bodily signs are in fact demons, stating that: A demon recognizes our thoughts better than the soul of another man, not because he sees them in themselves, but because he sees them by means of ³⁷ ‘Until you reach the spur that arcs, unbroken, / over these dens, these two will go unharmed’. ³⁸ ‘Your eyes are usually so very keen. / Can you not see? Just look! They grind their teeth. / Their frowns are warnings of what harm they mean’. ³⁹ ‘If I’, he said, ‘were leaded mirror glass, / I could not make your outer image mine / more swiftly than I grasp your inward stress’. See Robert Hollander, ‘Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII)’, Medioevo romanzo, 9 (1984): 85–100, also in Dante’s Inferno: The Indiana Critical Edition, trans. and ed. Mark Musa (1995), pp. 340–51. For a different reading, see Thomas Rendall, ‘Natura Non Sal Tum Facit: Virgil’s Telepathy in the Commedia Reconsidered’ Italica, 91.2 (2014): 125–44.

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DANTE, ARTIST OF GESTURE the most hidden external signals […] the same corporeal sign can, in general, correspond to many effects, but in the details there are some differences that a demon can perceive better than a man.⁴⁰

It might seem, Aquinas comments, that a demon is capable of reading our thoughts. In reality, devils can only have access to our thoughts by applying supernatural hermeneutic skills to our externally visible bodily signs. While a mere human can easily misinterpret a gesture or an expression (given that any single gesture we can perceive could be motivated by a range of thoughts and interactions) a demon can discern the slight differences between two differently motivated but similar gestures. This passage suggests that human bodily signs have a subtle range that is, to the keen observer, always meaningful. In fact, if demons can read the full range of human thoughts through these external signs, then we might conclude that, by this reasoning, every thought has a precise physical correlate.

Gestures and rhetoric Some gestures are legible without, or in contrast with, accompanying speech, while other gestures accompany and reinforce speech. Dante clearly understands speech to take place in the midst of a broader communicative system. Since, thus far, we have looked at gestures that work obliquely or in some contrast to accompanying speech, such as Dante’s silent smile at Statius’ enthusiasms, or the devils’ smirking faces while they feign an offer of assistance, we may now turn to gestures that are designed to reinforce speech. For this line of the consideration of gesture, it may be helpful to consider briefly some medieval received notions of rhetorical prowess and the ways in which gesture was taught as part of the work of persuasion.⁴¹

⁴⁰ Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de malo, q. 16 a. 8 ad 13–14. ‘Daemon melius cognoscit cogitationes quam anima alterius hominis, non quia videat eas in se, sed quia videt eas per exteriora signa magis occulta […] idem signum corporale in generali potest respondere multis effectibus; sed tamen in speciali sunt aliquae differentiae, quas Daemon melius potest percipere quam homo’. ⁴¹ The scholarship on classical and medieval rhetoric is vast, and this section will point only to a few selected sources relevant to Dante’s contexts where gesture is particularly emphasized. For further reading, see Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475, ed. Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For specifically Dantean contexts, see Dante e la retorica, ed. Luca Marcozzi (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2017); Ronald L. Martinez, ‘Rhetoric, literary theory, and practical criticism’ in Dante in Context, ed. Zygmunt G. Barański and Lino Pertile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) pp. 277–96.

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Canonical classical treatises of reference on rhetoric, such as that of Cicero, describe how bodies can be read: Every motion of the soul has its natural appearance, voice and gesture; and the entire body of a man, all his facial and vocal expressions, like the strings of a harp, sound just as the soul’s motion strikes them.⁴²

If the assumption is that observers can read the motions of the soul through facial expression and gesture, through every visible and audible element of the human body, then this practice of reading can be employed to a speaker’s advantage for rhetorical purposes. Within the Roman rhetorical system, gestures did not have a function that was different from that of language. Fritz Graf notes that they serve instead to ‘underline and amplify the message of language by stressing the emotional, non-rational element’.⁴³ Quintilian particularly emphasizes gesture’s power to affect the emotions of the audience: ‘all emotional appeals will inevitably fall flat, unless they are given the fire that voice, look, and the whole comportment of the body can give them’.⁴⁴ In other words, as Graf puts it, ‘the body signs of the orator demonstrate his own emotions which in turn excite similar emotions in the audience’.⁴⁵ A viewer or listener’s intuitive reception of gestures and their visible affective charge can thus be used as a persuasive tool by the skilled orator. Mary Carruthers has shown how Augustine’s famous account of his conversion emphasizes postures and gestures associated with ‘Invention and Delivery’, or actio, in classical rhetoric. With extensive detailed documentation of his gestures, such as tearing his hair, locking hands over knees, throwing himself upon the ground, and, famously, taking up the book, Augustine invites us to become, like the silent Alypius in his narrative, witnesses.⁴⁶ Ciceronian notions of actio such as: ‘est enim actio quasi sermo corporis’ (‘delivery is, in a way, the language of the body’) or ‘est enim actio quasi corporis quaedam eloquentia’ (‘delivery is a sort of eloquence of the body’)⁴⁷ were expanded in the work of Brunetto Latini, who translated and commented in ⁴² Fritz Graf, ‘The Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators’ in A Cultural History of Gesture, pp. 36– 58, (p. 40). Cicero, De oratore 3.216: ‘Omnis enim motus animi suum quendam a natura habet vultum et sonum et gestum; corpusque totum hominus et eius vultus omnesque voces, ut nervi in fidibus, ita sonant, ut a motu animi quoque sunt pulsae’. ⁴³ Graf, ‘The Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators’, p. 41 ⁴⁴ Graf, ‘The Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators’, p. 40. ⁴⁵ Graf, ‘The Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators’, p. 40. ⁴⁶ Mary Carruthers, ‘Reading’ in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, ed. Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 43–5. ⁴⁷ Cicero, De oratore 3.222, and Orator 55. See Fritz Graf, ‘The Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators’. See also Schmitt, La raison des gestes, pp. 40–54.

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his Rettorica, of around 1260, Cicero’s De inventione, revising and adding to the text in order to think through its utility for the comune and for democratic life. Brunetto significantly expands on Cicero’s discussion of pronuntiatio or actio, adding extra-linguistic or paralinguistic elements.⁴⁸ Commenting on Cicero’s discussion of pronuntiatio, cited as: ‘pronuntiatio è avenimento della persona e della voce secondo la dignitade delle cose e delle parole’, Brunetto’s ‘sponitore’ goes on at length about the gestural language that should accompany each sort of speech.⁴⁹ The key term here, for Brunetto is ‘a[d]venimento’, which renders Cicero’s term moderatio (‘pronuntiatio est ex rerum et verborum dignitate vocis et corporis moderatio’).⁵⁰ . Brunetto summarizes the importance of the regulation of bodily movements and the voice to fit the rhetorical situation as follows:

Et al ver dire poco vale trovare, ordinare, ornare parole et avere memoria chi non sae profferere e dicere le sue parole con avenimento. Et perciò alla fine dice Tulio che è pronuntiatio; e dice ch’è quella scienza per la quale noi sapemo profferere le nostre parole et amisurare et accordare la voce e ’l portamento della persona e delle membra secondo la qualitade del fatto e secondo la condizione della diceria.⁵¹

Bodily movements and carriage must be measured and tuned to work in harmony with the orator’s speech. Brunetto goes on to give examples, such as an orator who is seeking to move the people to war, in which case he must ‘parlare ad alta voce per franche parole e vittoriose, et avere argoglioso advenimento di persona e niquitosa ciera contra’ nemici’.⁵² Urging war means looking

⁴⁸ I refer to Brunetto Latini, La Rettorica, ed. Francesco Maggini (Florence: Galletti e Cocci, 1915). Translations are mine. On Brunetto Latini and Dante, see Johannes Bartuschat, ‘Appunti sulla concezione della Retorica in Brunetto Latini e in Dante’ in Dante e la retorica, pp. 29–44 and Catherine Keen, ‘Vernacular eloquence and Roman rhetoric between Brunetto and Dante’ in Dante e la cultura fiorentina. Bono Giamboni, Brunetto Latini e la formazione intellettuale dei laici, ed. Zygmunt G. Barański, Theodore J. Cachey Jr., and Luca Lombardo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2019). ⁴⁹ ‘pronuntiatio is the adaptation of the body and the voice according to the dignity of the matter and the words’. Latini, Rettorica, p. 54. ⁵⁰ Cicero, De inventione, 1.9. ⁵¹ ‘To tell the truth, it is worth little to invent, to organize, to ornament words and to memorize them if the orator does not know how to perform the words in the proper way. And so in the end Cicero explains pronuntiatio, he speaks of the knowledge of how best to perform our words and to measure and calibrate the voice and the carriage of the body and the members of the body according to the qualities of the matter at hand and the state of the words’. Rettorica, pp. 54–5. Similar notions can be found in Brunetto’s Li Livres dou Tresor as well. On this, see Schmitt, La raison des gestes, p. 280. ⁵² ‘speak in a loud voice with sincere and victorious words, and have a proud carriage of the body and an aspect of disregard for the enemy’.

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courageous and warlike. Brunetto even includes instructions for the gesturality of the orator’s horse, in case the speech should need to be delivered from horseback: sì dee elli avere cavallo di grande rigoglio, sì che quando il segnore parla il suo cavallo gridi et anatrisca e razzi la terra col piede e levi la polvere e soffi per le nari e faccia tutta romire la piazza, sicchè paia che cominci lo stormo e sia nella battaglia.⁵³

The gesturality of the horse works as an extension of the body of the orator, expanding his affective reach. Once the horse has performed this sequence of warlike actions, the orator may in fact bring his gestures of war to a climax as well: ‘et in questo punto non pare che ssi disvegna a la fiata levare la mano o per mostrare abondante animo o quasi per minaccia de’ nemici’.⁵⁴ The orator’s lifted hand, at this particular point in his carefully constructed scene, might indicate boldness or might already seem to threaten the imagined enemy. Brunetto prescribes a different set of movements for orator and horse when peace is instead that which is being urged, as the orator must have ‘umile advenimento del corpo, la ciera amorevole, la voce soave, la parola paceffica, le mani chete’.⁵⁵ And the horse must be ‘chetissimo e pieno di tanta posa e sì guernito di soavitade che sopr’a llui non si muova un sol pelo, ma elli medesimo paia factore della pace’.⁵⁶ The horse’s gesturality amplifies that of the orator. The control of the horse shows on a grander scale the control the orator exercises over his own body. If the orator has ‘le mani chete’, the horse must be ‘chetissimo’. If the orator has ‘la voce soave’, the horse must be ‘sì guernito di soavitade che sopr’a llui non si muova un sol pelo’. Third in the range of oratorial situations, Brunetto places happiness, ‘letizia’, in which the orator must hold his head high, show a joyful face, and make sure that all his words and glances, ‘viste’, convey happiness. In pain or sadness (‘dolore’), his head must conversely be bent, his face sad, his eyes full of tears, and all his words and ‘viste’ full of pain, ‘sicchè ciascuno sembiante per sè e ciascuno motto per sè ⁵³ ‘He should have a valorous horse, so that when the orator speaks, his horse snorts and neighs and scratches at the earth with its hooves, and raises the dust and blows out his nostrils and makes the whole piazza resound, so that it seems an assault is beginning and he is in battle’, Latini, Rettorica, p. 55. ⁵⁴ ‘And at this point is might even be a good idea to lift one’s hand to show strength of spirit or almost as if one were threatening an enemy’. Latini, Rettorica, p. 55. ⁵⁵ ‘a humble bearing of the body, a loving face, a gentle voice, peaceful words, and quiet hands’, Latini, Rettorica, p. 55. ⁵⁶ ‘extremely quiet and full of poise and gentleness, such that not a single hair moves on his body, and he seems himself a peace-maker’, Latini, Rettorica, p. 55.

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muova l’animo dell’uditore a piangere et a dolore’.⁵⁷ Brunetto is explicit about the necessary alignment and regulation of words, gestures and all forms of bodily expression. The orator must therefore calibrate and synchronize every bodily element alongside every verbal element. And if a horse is involved, this is all the more the case, as the equestrian speech requires a great show of affective collaboration from the animal. It is only in this way that the speech will have its intended goal, to move the soul of the listeners to mirror that which the orator shows forth. Writing within the political context of the Florentine comune, Brunetto suggests that affective movement of the audience, best obtained by the alignment of words and gestures, is a key tool of political persuasion. In this section, I have spoken of conceptualizations of gestures as useful tools to accompany speech and provide affective force to speech. But I cannot conclude without at least alluding to the suspicion that was also present in the medieval period concerning gestures and oratory. Brunetto warns against gesticulation, or gesture that is seen as excessive, such as too much lifting of the hands.⁵⁸ The use of gesture in preaching was a topic of considerable debate. While some deplored the histrionics of popular preachers precisely because of the dramatic effects on their audiences, Franciscan preachers sought to draw on the gesticulation and spectacle of the giullari who performed to crowds in town squares and streets. Schmitt suggests that mendicant preaching of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries can be seen as enacting a synthesis between the ancient rhetoric studied in universities and the art of the giullari.⁵⁹

Gestural models of prayer As we have begun to see, Dante illustrates the human potential to read bodily movements in the Commedia, and does so in a milieu in which those bodily movements were given great importance for affective impact and political as well as religious persuasion. Gestures were often understood as a form of bodily movement to be disciplined for the good of the soul.⁶⁰ Often this emphasis was positive, but at times discourse on gestures focused on all that ⁵⁷ ‘such that each look and word moves the soul of the listener to weeping and pain’, Latini, Rettorica, p. 55. ⁵⁸ See Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou Tresor, ed. F.J. Carmody (Geneva: Slatkine, 1975) pp. 321, 244 (III, 3 and II, 66). ⁵⁹ Schmitt, La raison des gestes, pp. 280–1. See Schmitt’s account also for discussion of concerns about gesture, ‘The Ethics of Gesture’, pp. 128–47. ⁶⁰ Schmitt, ‘The Ethics of Gesture’, pp. 129–30.

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was to be avoided, as in the case of Hugh of Saint Victor’s De institutione novitiorum. Hugh dedicates a chapter to surveying the negative connotations of gesture; one must, for example, avoid softness and wantonness of gesture.⁶¹ Such interpretation of the potent promise and danger inherent in the reception of gesture means that orators, artists, and writers could expect possible response in the forms of affective involvement, mirroring, or counterbalancing behaviors. How does this fraught potency of gesture extend to Dante’s expectations for his readers, as he so carefully outlines the various movements of bodies throughout the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and even, to some extent, and by more subtle means, the Paradiso? What neuroscientists and scholars of cognition are studying today aligns well with what Dante understands about human observation of bodily movement; humans are equipped to read bodies and movement as a reaction to a specific perception or sensation. This does not, of course, mean that such reading is necessarily easy. The issue that is rather more difficult has to do with the ends or purposes of Dante’s extensive use of the knowledge and depiction of motivated bodily movement and with descriptions of the work of interpreting such bodily signs. I would suggest that Dante’s premise is his sense of the human tendency to follow models and often to mirror what we ‘see’, whether we see those things directly or through mediation. By consequence, he has filled his Commedia with both anti-models and models, opportunities to engage with and to act upon. Gestural densities in the text invite the reader into an ongoing interaction, draw us into taking part in order to make sense of them. Mirroring is one key form of the participation that gesture invites. That humans consciously and unconsciously mirror what they see is demonstrated across Dante’s work. We will consider various instances of how Dante employs this knowledge of human behavior in different passages of the Commedia throughout this book. To give just one example here that might work to set the terms of our inquiry, we might briefly consider the first group that Dante encounters on his journey that can be taken fully as a penitential model, the purgatorial prideful. The proud are described in a somatically vivid and detailed way, to the extent that the description seems targeted to stimulate our kinesic intelligence. The lines, ‘La grave condizione / di lor tormento a terra li rannicchia’ and ‘Come per sostentar solaio o tetto, / per mensola talvolta una figura / si vede ⁶¹ For an analysis of Hugh of Saint Victor’s definitions of and prescriptions for gesture, see Schmitt, La raison des gestes, pp. 174–200.

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giugner le ginocchia al petto’, (Purg. 10, 115–6; 130–2)⁶² offer memorable and corporeally intense images that invite the reader to visualize bodies like corbels, undergoing unimaginable strain. The text goes on to detail how the effect of observation of this state creates a partial postural mirroring on Dante’s part as he encounters these burdened shades: ‘A scoltando chinai in giù la faccia’, (Purg. 11, 73) he tells us, and, later, ‘Di pari, come buoi che vanno a giogo, / m’andava io con quellanima carca’ (Purg. 12, 1–2)⁶³. To listen and to engage, Dante first bends his head, and eventually makes his stride match that of his penitent interlocutor. For Dante as character, the observation of this extreme physical suffering provokes an imitative kinesic correspondence that supports his dialog with the penitent souls. And the poet underlines the fact that such physical mirroring as a mode of attention to the suffering of these penitents is fundamental for the transformational comprehension of what he is observing. This becomes clear when Virgil tells Dante to ‘volgi li occhi in giùe’ (Purg. 12, 13)⁶⁴ and he observes the ground-level bas-reliefs sculpted with examples of pride: Come, perché di lor memoria sia, sovra i sepolti le tombe terragne portan segnato quel ch’egli eran pria (onde lì molte volte si ripiagne per la puntura dela rimembranza, che solo a’ pii dà de le calcagne), sì vid’ io lì (Purg. 12, 16–22)⁶⁵

Dante divides the observers of such ‘tombe terragne’ into two groups, the pious and the others. Only the pious, weeping, feel this pain as a stimulus to penitential action. Dante emphasizes the necessity of seeing the bas-reliefs in this way ‘sì vid’ io lì’.⁶⁶ It is crucial to remember that piety, in this case, entails not ⁶² ‘Their grievous mode of punishment […] / so creases them and bends them to the ground’; ‘A s sometimes, bracing up a roof or vault, / a figure will be seen as corbel stone / that, bending, joins its two knees to its chest’. ⁶³ ‘Paired up, like oxen yoked to move as one, / so onward with that burdened soul I went’. ⁶⁴ ‘Just turn your eyes down there’. ⁶⁵ ‘Compare: to serve as some memorial / for those entombed beneath, our earthly graves / bear signs of what they had been when alive— / at which it often happens that we weep, / responding to the spur of memories / which only strike the heel of pious minds. / I now saw carvings there’. ⁶⁶ Literally, ‘in this way I saw there’. See Carlo Delcorno on Purg. XII: ‘li guarda con la malinconia raccolta di chi visita una tomba di famiglia’ in ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, Lettere italiane, 35. 1 (1983): 3–28 (p.16). For analysis of this passage in terms of recognizing the personhood of even these famous sinners, see my Dante’s Persons, pp. 100–14.

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only the action of weeping, but also a downward gaze. Dante is able to see in this way because he is in a position of humility, eyes downcast, ready to receive the spurrings of conscience (‘le calcagne’). The choreography of Purgatorio is carefully orchestrated throughout to suggest specific ways of looking. In fact, where looking is impeded, as in the black smoke of the terrace of the wrathful, the choreography of bodies and shades becomes all the more important, as proxemics and movement in concert becomes, once again, critical:

Sì come cieco va dietro a sua guida per non smarrirsi e per non dar di cozzo in cosa che ’l molesti, o forse ancida, m’andava io per l’aere amaro e sozzo, ascoltando il mio duca che diceva: ‘Pur guarda che da me tu non sia mozzo’. (Purg. 16, 10–5)⁶⁷

The simile draws attention to the necessary ‘bodily’ proximity between Dante and Virgil, that must be carefully maintained throughout. Even here, where the shapes of bodies must remain invisible, the text provides a kinesic example of the antidote to wrath in this close collaboration of movement between Dante and the guide he must follow. What, then, is asked of the reader in this context? The intense textual attention paid to physical and affective gestural forms cannot but attract the notice of a reader who is ‘accorto’. What can the reader ‘see’ if they can visualize the shape or the movement of a penitential body? How does their mode of seeing enable their own potential penitence? We can turn to other forms of documentation of explicitly penitential or devotional models from the same period for clues as to how bodies were proposed for reading, and what this act of reading bodies and bodily movement was meant to offer. The thirteenth century was an important moment for the codification of the gestures of prayer. Two texts are particularly worthy of our attention in this regard. The first is Peter Chanter’s De penitentia et partibus eius, which ⁶⁷ ‘And, as a blind man goes behind his guide— / for fear he’ll wander or collide with things / that might well maim him or, perhaps, could kill— / I, too, went on through acrid, filthy air, attending to my leader, who would say, / “Take care. Don’t get cut off !” repeatedly’.

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has a section specifically dedicated to gestures, De oratione et partibus eius.⁶⁸ Nine manuscripts have survived, dating from 1220 to 1400. Two of the earliest manuscripts were produced in Padua and Venice in 1220. As Jean-Claude Schmitt has noted, while this is not the first treatise to cover the gestures of prayer, something new emerges in this treatise: the sense of the person at prayer as an artisan or technician of gesture.⁶⁹ The microscopic detail paid to each gesture suggests that these ‘body techniques’ are themselves the subject of study, and not merely to be noted as ‘symptoms’ or ‘signs’ of the state of the soul. In drawing attention to gestures as body techniques to be learned, the work suggests that these gestural practices can intensify the affectus, or the shape of desire, of the person at prayer.⁷⁰ The treatise distinguishes seven modes of prayer, each illustrated. The illustrations were intended to be present from the first, as we know from the fact that the text makes reference to the illustrations.⁷¹ A second text key text in this landscape of the codification of prayer gestures at this time is the treatise entitled De modo orandi corporaliter sancti Dominici (The Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic), written by an anonymous friar, probably in Bologna, between 1260 and 1288.⁷² The author explains that prayer ‘so kindled the fervour of [Saint Dominic’s] good will that he could not contain it: his devotion showed quite plainly in his bodily members’.⁷³ Dominic’s private conversation with God becomes a visible manifestation of what prayer should look like for the benefit of his fellows, who observe his prayer from a distance, and for the readers of the treatise, who read detailed descriptions of how Dominic held his arms, hands, and shaped his body for each particular instance of prayer. This treatise, also, was often accompanied by illustrations. Both text and image document the exemplary piety of Dominic, but in addition to a hagiographical function, they dedicate themselves to envisioning the language of the Psalms in bodily form, with each of ⁶⁸ I refer to Richard Trexler’s edition: Richard C. Trexler, The Christian at Prayer: An Illustrated Prayer Manual Attributed to Peter the Chanter (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1987). ⁶⁹ Schmitt, La raison des gestes, p. 303. ⁷⁰ Schmitt, La raison des gestes, p. 303. ⁷¹ The Christian at Prayer, p. 191, ‘sicut docet hec ymago’. ⁷² I will refer to Simon Tugwell’s critical edition of the Nine Ways of Prayer: ‘The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic: A Textual Study and Critical Edition’, Mediaeval Studies, 47 (1985): 1–124. Translations are taken from The Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic, ed. and trans. Simon Tugwell (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1978). Durling notes that the Modi orandi Sancti Dominici offers an example of the medieval practice of adopting specific bodily positions for different kinds of prayer. See Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996–2011), vol. 2, p. 605. ⁷³ ‘et accendebat feruorem bone uoluntatis in tantum ut mens cohibere non posset quin deuotionem membra corporis manifestarent certis inditiis’ (‘The Nine Ways of Prayer’, p. 82, trans. p. 11).

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the nine ways of physical prayer performing a gestural reading of a particular psalm. What is understood to be visible in Dominic’s body is both the physical extension of the workings of Dominic’s soul and, at the same time, a model of the way in which the body must work to tune a soul: ‘the soul, as it causes the body to move, is in turn moved by the body’,⁷⁴ or, as it is put later: ‘This manner of praying stirs up devotion, the soul stirring the body, and the body in turn stirring the soul’.⁷⁵ The Nine Ways of Prayer is explicit about its goal, via text and illustration, to render many of Dominic’s postures of prayer imitable for devout readers and viewers of the text.⁷⁶ Dante’s goals are, perhaps, similar. As he explains in no uncertain terms, the poem is meant to draw its readers toward their personal salvation. Thus it is critical for Dante’s readers to fully see the postures of the penitents in his poem so that they too may move their bodies in ways that stir the soul to devotion. As the Nine Ways as well as the Purgatorio make clear, it is not only souls that move bodies, but bodies that move souls. To reconfigure human relationships to one another and to the divine, the reader/viewer must be able to see or visualize and to imitate, or join in with, gestural states of virtue. All of this discussion takes place explicitly in the context of modeling prayer practice that can in turn shape a willing soul. Just as the treatise on Dominic’s modes of prayer delineates a sequence of physical postures and gestures that the reader might adopt for different situations of prayer, so Dante’s Purgatorio offers a sequence of penitential practices that the reader might similarly adopt. There are, after all, numerous correspondences between the shapes of prayer in the prayer treatises of the thirteenth century and in Dante’s Purgatorio: the prideful bow in prayer as in Dominic’s first way of prayer, which corresponds to the sixth mode in Peter Chanter’s text, Incurvatus sum usquequaque; Dante’s avaricious prostrate themselves as they sing Adhaesit pavimento, literalizing the language of the psalm, as in Dominic’s second way of prayer, which corresponds to Peter’s fifth, and is referred to as Adhaesit pavimento in Peter’s text; Dante’s gluttons strain to reach upwards (as I will discuss at greater length in Chapter 4) as in Dominic’s seventh way of prayer, which is Peter’s first, Elevatio manuum.⁷⁷ While it has been obvious

⁷⁴ ‘ut anima mouens corpus remoueretur a corpore’ (‘The Nine Ways of Prayer’, p. 82, trans. p. 11). ⁷⁵ ‘Talis enim modus orandi incitat deuotionem, alternatim ex anima in corpus et ex corpore in animam’ (‘The Nine Ways of Prayer’, p. 82, trans. p. 11). ⁷⁶ For discussion of cross posture as not intended to be imitated for general use, see my Dante’s Persons, pp. 71–2. ⁷⁷ For a more complete discussion of the parallels between the Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic and Dante’s Purgatorio, see my ‘Postures of Penitence in Dante’s Purgatorio’, Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, 131 (2013): 219–36.

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to read these prayer treatises as a set of practices intended to be emulated by readers, we have not, thus far, generally ascribed similar sorts of mechanisms to Dante’s text, even when the same postures and gestures of prayer are delineated. Of course, the Commedia is never prescriptive, offering, rather, a range of possibilities to be taken up freely or not. We might also consider the genre of the affective meditations on the Passion that in Sarah McNamer’s words, ‘ask their readers to imagine themselves present at scenes of Christ’s suffering and to perform compassion for that suffering victim in a private drama of the heart’.⁷⁸ One of the most important of these for our context is the Meditations on the Life of Christ, a fourteenthcentury text composed in Tuscany.⁷⁹ It had been assumed that the longer Latin text, Meditationes Vitae Christi, was composed first, by a Franciscan friar identified as pseudo-Bonaventure. McNamer posits instead that this vernacular testo breve may in fact have been an earlier version of the Meditations, composed by a woman, a Poor Clare from Pisa. The Latin expansion, thought to be composed for a Poor Clare, would then be subsequent to the text witnessed by the Oxford Bodleian Library MS Canonici Italian 174. Whether written by a woman or for a woman, or both, the Meditations consist of a series of guided meditative exercises that take as their starting point the main episodes in the life and passion of Christ, elaborating details beyond the scriptural narrative, details that tend toward the sensorial and the affective. Like Dante’s Commedia, the text repeatedly asks the reader to ‘see’, ‘behold’, or to ‘look’ at the scene the author is describing.⁸⁰ The Latin text, which has more extensive framing for the elaborated narration, offers some clear indication of what the reader was meant to do with the text: ‘So, if you wish to profit from all this, Sister, you must place yourself in the presence of whatever is related as having been said or done by the Lord Jesus, as if you were hearing with your own ears and seeing it with your own eyes’,⁸¹ or, as put another way later in the text: ‘simply make yourself present in the very place where, before your eyes, it occurs to your mind that events

⁷⁸ Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), p. 1. ⁷⁹ Sarah McNamer (ed.), Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018). ⁸⁰ See Beth Mulvaney, ‘Gesture and Audience: The Passion and Duccio’s Maesta’ in Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art, ed. Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), pp. 178–220 (pp. 181–2). ⁸¹ John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, ed. and trans. Francis X. Taney, Anne Miller, and Mary C. Stallings-Taney, (Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 2000) p. 4. See pp. 2–3 in Meditationes vitae christi (Venice: Manfredo Bonelli, 1497) available at: https://ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/login?url=https:// search.proquest.com/docview/2090340545?accountid=9851.

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were taking place’.⁸² In other words, the narration of the words and deeds of Jesus and those around him is intended to be experienced as if present to the senses in the first person. As the vernacular text puts it: Attendi bene qui, et studiate de esserne presente cum la mente a intendere quelle cose che qui se dice et se face. Risguarda cum la mente divota […].⁸³

One can see how the level of detail that the Meditations provides would allow for vivid embodied visualizations. For instance, we may consider the discussion of the crucifixion itself (and here I turn again to the vernacular text): Et inchiodado che haveno la mano drita, si branchorono la sinistra et quella non çonçea al buso. Alora quelli maledeti sì comerçorono a tirarla per força per farla g[i]onçere al segno. Et tanto gli tirò quello braço che tutti i nodi se largono, et tanto feceno che per força el feceno açonçere al suo luocho.⁸⁴

Passages such as these seem expressly targeted to work on the reader’s ‘kinesic intelligence’, or our capacity to perceive and interpret movement that is based on perceptual simulations. The unnatural, horrific degree of stretching described here in the emphasis between the mismatching of the holes in the cross and the length of Christ’s arms produces an immediate embodied response, inviting the reader to attempt to match (and fail to match) this horror against their own experience of reaching, stretching, or pulling and being pulled. We may also look to medieval drama to see how the events around Christ’s crucifixion were rendered visible and potentially participatory for spectators. The fourteenth-century Cividale Planctus Mariae, for instance, contains some 79 rubrics denoting gestures for 127 lines.⁸⁵ The rubrics are very specific about gestures of indication and the positioning of arms and hands. John, for instance, gestures to the cross and then points it out to the audience, bringing ⁸² John of Caulibus, Meditations, p. 332. ⁸³ ‘Pay attention well here, and strive to make yourself present with your mind so that you can understand the things that are said and done here. Gaze with devotion …’ Meditations, ed. McNamer, p. 6. ⁸⁴ ‘And when they finished nailing the right hand, they seized the left, which did not reach the hole they had drilled for it. So these wicked men began to stretch it by force to make it join up with the place they had drilled’. Meditations, ed. McNamer, p. 140. ⁸⁵ See Dunbar H. Ogden, ‘Gesture and Characterization in the Liturgical Drama’ in Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art, ed. Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), pp. 28–9.

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the spectators into the action; the indication here is with two fingers, joining the index with the next in a slight curve.⁸⁶ The textual traces of medieval drama that are accessible to us today do not often reveal the body language of the performances; the Cividale Planctus Mariae manuscript is thus a precious testament to the immense weight given to gesture in medieval drama. The performance of lament entails carefully orchestrated gestures of showing and sorrowing, beginning with Mary Magdalene’s arms outstretched to the audience, bringing the viewers in to direct their attention to the cross. The sequence of gestures is intended to maximize the affective reach of the performance.⁸⁷ There is obviously much more that could be said in each of these areas. In the foregoing pages, I have discussed just a sampling of the hermeneutic tools we have for reading gesture in Dante’s Commedia within the poem’s cultural environments, tools that we will employ in the following chapters as we consider the poem’s modes of engaging its readers.⁸⁸

⁸⁶ See Eric Strand, Matthew Steel, and Clifford Davidson, ‘Demonstration Performance of the Cividale Planctus Mariae: A Report’, Comparative Drama, 42.3 (2008): 287–300 (p. 294). ⁸⁷ Strand, Steele, and Davidson, p. 294. Laura Jacobus points out that emphasis in church drama, particularly in the fourteenth century, was on the held pose rather than transitional movement. The gestures of the actors might thus have looked very similar to their counterparts in paintings. See her ‘Giotto’s Annunciation in the Arena Chapel, Padua’, The Art Bulletin, 81.1 (1999): 93–107 (p. 97). ⁸⁸ For more on the promise of thinking through embodied cognition in literature, see Alberto Casadei, Biologia della letteratura. Corpo, stile, storia (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2018), p. 35.

2 Dante as Visual Artist There has been much work studying how medieval programmes of visual art were designed to excite emotion and inspire penitential action.¹ In the following chapters, I will refer to modes of structured viewing and experience that have been applied to the visual arts in order to draw parallels with the ways that gestural episodes in the Commedia are presented within programmes or itineraries through the architectural space of the poem. In this chapter, I will briefly set out some justification for this methodology, some ways that we might begin to take up the challenge of thinking of Dante’s poetry itself as also visual.² Dante’s relationship to the visual arts is difficult to trace in biographical terms, despite intense desire to do so.³ As ever, the only fixed point of reference we have lies in his works themselves. Dante gives an account of himself working in the visual arts, specifically, drawing, in his Vita nova:⁴ In quello giorno nel quale si compiea l’anno che questa donna era fatta de li cittadini di vita eterna, io mi sedea in parte ne la quale, ricordandomi di lei, disegnava uno angelo sopra certe tavolette; e mentre io lo disegnava, volsi li occhi, e vidi lungo me uomini a li quali si convenia di fare onore, e riguardavano quello che io facea; e secondo che me fu detto poi, egli erano stati già alquanto, anzi che io me ne accorgesse. Quando li vidi, mi levai, e salutando ¹ I will discuss crucial points of reference in the course of this chapter. For further reading on the affective emotional power of religious images, see Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Hans Belting, ‘The New Role of Narrative in Public Painting of the Trecento: “Historia” and Allegory’ in Pictorial Narrative in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Marianna Shreve Simpson (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1985), pp. 151–68. ² This is very much in the spirit of Gervase Rosser’s charge that we need to ‘get beyond the traditional binary separation between words and images’ in order to ‘appreciate the visual dimension of Dante’s thought and writing’. See ‘Visual Culture’ in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, pp. 188–9. ³ Laura Pasquini aims to reconstruct Dante’s ‘orizzonte figurativo’ in her recent ‘Pigliare occhi, per aver la mente’: Dante, la Commedia e le arti figurative (Rome: Carocci, 2020), p.11. Lucia Battaglia Ricci calls it Dante’s ‘biblioteca visiva’. See ‘Una biblioteca “visiva”’ in Leggere Dante, ed. Lucia Battaglia Ricci (Ravenna: Longo, 2003), pp. 191–215. ⁴ On the fascination with this episode in Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others, see Giuliana Pieri, ‘Dante and the Pre-Raphaelites: British and Italian responses’ in Dante on View: The Reception of Dante in the Visual and Performing Arts, ed. Antonella Braida and Luisa Calè (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 109–22. Dante, Artist of Gesture. Heather Webb, Oxford University Press. © Heather Webb (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.003.0003

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In this account, the processes of memory and image-making take both visual and verbal forms. While remembering Beatrice on the anniversary of her death, Dante draws an angel upon certain ‘tavolette’ (‘boards’).⁶ He is so absorbed in this activity that he does not notice the arrival of unnamed gentlemen. Dante explains to them that, while drawing, he was preoccupied with the presence of someone they could not perceive (Beatrice, though he carefully withholds her name). When they leave, he carries on his drawing and this activity induces him to continue his communication of this presence that he experienced while drawing. The communication takes the form of a sonnet.⁷ Of course, it is possible that every detail of the encounter recounted is a fiction, and in that case he could also very well have invented this pose as the sort of person who draws. And some scholars have emphasized that Dante drops the drawing to return to writing, emphasizing that as his privileged activity.⁸ Some other scholars have instead taken the notion of Dante as visual artist very literally, noting that he at times uses immensely technical vocabulary for speaking about pigments and a variety of painterly techniques. To take ⁵ ‘On the first anniversary of the day that this woman was made one of the citizens of eternal life, I was sitting in a place where, reminiscing about her, I was sketching an angel on some boards. And while I was drawing, I turned my eyes and saw beside me some men whose rank required that one greet them respectfully. They were looking at what I was doing, and to judge by what was said to me, they had already been there for a while before I realized it. When I saw them, I got up, and greeting them I said, “Someone else was just with me; that is why I was absorbed in thought.” After they had gone, I went back to my work of drawing the figures of angels. As I was doing this, the idea came to me of composing a poem, as a kind of anniversary memorial, addressed to those men who had visited me. And then I composed this sonnet, which opens: “She had just come”.’ ⁶ See Marco Santagata, L’io e il mondo: un’interpretazione di Dante (Bologna: Mulino, 2011), p. 136; Stefano Carrai, Dante elegiaco, una chiave di lettura per la Vita nova (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2006), pp. 67–8. On the concept of the ‘annovale’ between social and religious acts of mourning and troubadoric anniversaries of encounter, see Marco Grimaldi, ‘L’anniversario di Beatrice’ in ‘Per beneficio e concordia di studio’: studi danteschi offerti a Enrico Malato per i suoi ottant’anni, ed. Andrea Mazzucchi (Rome: Salerno, 2015), pp. 479–91. ⁷ For further discussions of this episode, see Fabio Camilletti, ‘Dante Painting an Angel: Image Making, Double-oriented Sonnets and Dissemblance in Vita Nuova XXXIV’ in Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages, ed. Manuele Gragnolati, Tristan Kay, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (London: Legenda, 2012), pp. 71–84; Marcello Ciccuto, ‘“Era venuta ne la mente mia” (VN, XXXIV.7): La visione nel libello e l’immagine in Dante’ in ‘La gloriosa donna de la mente’: A Commentary on the ‘Vita Nuova’, ed. Vincenzo Moleta (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1994), pp. 181–93; Federica Pich, ‘L’immagine Donna de la mente dalle Rime alla Vita Nuova’ in Le rime di Dante, ed. Claudia Berra and Paolo Borsa (Milan: Cisalpino, 2010), pp. 345–76. ⁸ As Gervase Rosser puts it, commentators ‘have preferred to see the mind of Dante riding high above the mundane world of material images’. See ‘Visual Culture’, p. 188.

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an example from Purgatorio 7, Dante speaks of ‘oro e argento fine, cocco e biacca, / indico, legno lucido e sereno, / fresco smeraldo in l’ora ch’e’ si fiacca’ (Purg. 7, 73–5)⁹, a description that seems to allude to the techniques of the preparation of colours for painting.¹⁰ The basic revelation of this passage from the Vita nova that I want to hold on to, however, is that Dante sees the visual and verbal forms of memory and image-making as feeding into one another. To put it another way, both drawing and the composition of poetry attest to and represent (in the sense of making present again) the living and the dead. In this chapter, I will discuss methodologies for thinking about Dante’s Commedia as a text that may be best understood by considering its place, or its situatedness, within a broader cultural ecosystem of texts that are verbal, visual, and verbal-visual hybrids.¹¹ Daniela Brogi, in her work on Christian realism in Caravaggio and Manzoni, suggests the concept of the ‘ecosystem’ as a way of thinking relations between text and image: ‘la relazione tra parola e immagine non vive, né va considerata, puramente in termini di intertestualità o di prelievi unici, ma nei termini di un ecosistema’.¹² The concept of the ecosystem is one that I will employ for my consideration of Dante and the visual artists that are his counterparts. Seeking to identify a precise visual source for an image in the poem is an exercise which is enormously fraught in Dante’s case, as our understanding of his biography retains so many elements that are conjectural, and, in fact, the more that comes to light, the more we realize that we cannot know.¹³ While Dante might, for instance, have seen the San Silvestro frescoes in Rome in 1300, this is unconfirmed.¹⁴ It seems likely that he had seen the mosaics of Sant’Apollinare in Classe when he writes the Cacciaguida cantos ⁹ ‘Gold, finest silver, cochineal, white lead, / indigo, ebony polished to a sheen, / the freshest emeralds when they’ve just been split.’ See, for example, Marco Santagata, Dante. Il romanzo della sua vita (Milan: Mondadori, 2016), pp. 77–9; pp. 364–5. See also Fortunato Bellonzi’s entry on ‘Arti figurative’ in Enciclopedia dantesca, ed. Umberto Bosco, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–8), vol. 1, pp. 400–3. ¹⁰ On Dante’s knowledge of the world of the arts, particularly painting, see Giovanna Frosini, ‘Dante disegnatore’ in ‘In principio fuit textus’. Studi di linguistica e filologia offerti a Rosario Coluccia in occasione della nomina a professore emerito, ed. Vito Luigi Castrignanò, Francesca De Blasi, and Marco Maggiore (Florence: Cesati, 2018), pp. 83–92. ¹¹ For examples of working between word and image, linguistic and visual dimensions in the context of preaching, see Lina Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini: Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin: Einaudi, 2002). ¹² ‘The relationship between word and image does not exist, and nor should it be considered, purely in terms of intertextuality, or unique borrowings, but rather in terms of an ecosystem.’ Brogi, Un romanzo per gli occhi, p. 38. ¹³ See Santagata, Dante: il romanzo della sua vita, Giorgio Inglese, Vita di Dante: una biografia possibile (Rome: Carocci, 2015), Elisa Brilli and Giuliano Milani, Vite nuove. Biografia e autobiografia di Dante (Rome: Carocci, 2021). ¹⁴ See Ronald B. Herzman and William Stephany, ‘Dante and the Frescoes at Santi Quattro Coronati’, Speculum, 87 (2012): 95–146.

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of Paradiso, but, again, it cannot be confirmed.¹⁵ We know Dante mentions Giotto and has some ideas about Giotto’s relationship to his master, Cimabue, but we cannot say for sure if he saw the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and, if so, when.¹⁶ And then there is the fact that Dante, when he references anything from anywhere, whether it is a reference to classical literature, or natural philosophy, or visual art, renders it his own to such a degree that efforts to establish provenance are usually foiled.¹⁷ So we will avoid the trap of attempting to match anything in Dante’s text to a single work of visual art of his time as ‘source’. But this does not exempt us from the necessary task of working between Dante’s poem and the visual art of his time in other ways. We might instead ask this question. In what way does the Commedia resemble, in its modes of inviting reader engagement, a programme of mosaics or frescoes?¹⁸ One basic and necessary place to begin is to consider that medieval art and medieval texts seek to position images and words in such a way as to render the content easier to comprehend as part of a greater whole. In Vincent of Beauvais’s encyclopaedic Speculum, we find an idealizing description of the possibilities of contemplating a totality that includes the diversity of creation and the diversity of temporalities:¹⁹

Ipsa namque mens plerumque paululum a prefatis cogitationum et affectionum fecibus se erigens, et in specula rationis ut potest assurgens, quasi de quodam eminenti loco, totius mundi magnitudinem uno ictu considerat, infinita loca diuersis creature generibus repleta intra se continentem, eum quoque totius mundi uidelicet a principio usque nunc uno quodam aspectu nihilominus conspicit, ibique tempora omnia diuersas per generationum

¹⁵ See Pasquini, Pigliare occhi, p.16 on Paradiso 14; Laura Pasquini, Iconografie dantesche. Dalla luce del mosaico all’immagine profetica (Ravenna: Longo, 2008); Laura Pasquini, ‘I mosaici ravennati come fonti figurative della “Commedia”’ in Dante e Ravenna, ed. Alfredo Cottignoli and Sebastiana Nobili (Ravenna: Longo, 2019), pp. 193–203; and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante’s ‘Paradise’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 170–238. ¹⁶ See Purgatorio 11, 94–5. Benvenuto da Imola reported in his 1376 commentary that Dante and Giotto met in Padova while Giotto was at work on the Scrovegni Chapel. Comment on Purg. 11, 94–6. ¹⁷ On this tendency, see Pasquini, Pigliare occhi, p. 16. ¹⁸ On the relationship between Dante’s text and mosaics, see Pasquini, Iconografie dantesche. For readings of Dante’s text in the context of visual art, see Battaglia Ricci, ‘Una biblioteca “visiva”’ and Lucia Battaglia Ricci, ‘Viaggio e visione: tra immaginario visivo e invenzione letteraria’ in Dante da Firenze all’aldilà, Atti del terzo Seminario dantesco internazionale (Firenze, 9–11 giugno 2000), ed. Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Cesati, 2001), pp. 15–73. ¹⁹ For a survey of Dante’s ‘encyclopaedism’ and his relationship to Vincent of Beauvais and the relevant bibliography, see Franziska Meier, ‘Encyclopaedism’ in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, pp. 211–26.

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successiones rerumque mutationes continentia quasi sub quadam linea comprehendit, et inde saltem intuitu fidei ad cogitandum utcumque creatoris ipsius magnitudinem, pulchritudinem atque perpetuitatem ascendit.²⁰

The impulse that Vincent describes, to see a totality and to be able to comprehend diversity within that totality, is something that is performed on a visual level, to provide just one example, in the apse of San Clemente al Laterano in Rome. The mosaics, dating from the twelfth or thirteenth century, display the crucified Christ at the centre. The cross is planted within a huge acanthus plant. The acanthus is watered with Christ’s blood and encloses, with a stunning constellation of vine-like branches that extend symmetrically in spirals, various scenes filled with examples from across humanity and creation. The spiralling vines organically display both the variety of these elements of creation and the links that exist between each and every element, with Christ’s sacrifice as the heart that feeds all creation with life-giving and unifying force. The mosaic takes a diagrammatic shape, according to some scholars. The tree of the cross, with its resemblance both to the acanthus and the grape vine, arranges a series of smaller images with the intention of shaping a cognitive machine for monastic rhetoric.²¹ It is a work that organizes theological, scientific, and doctrinal knowledge. As in Vincent of Beauvais’s declared aspiration for his encyclopaedic text, the eye that contemplates the apse mosaic likewise feels a sense of joy in wondering at the totality of the greatness of creation and the variety of its elements. The opportunity to perceive such a totality in a single glance allows for the pleasure of the perception of such difference within, as in the range of birds of different colours and shapes.²² The apse seems an excellent model, along with the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, or the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, for thinking the ²⁰ ‘For truly the mind itself, rising a degree out of the aforementioned impurities of thought and sentiment, and mounting as it may into the watchtower of reason, as if into a prominent place, considers the greatness of all the world in one stroke, with its infinite regions filled with diverse kinds of creatures. The mind also perceives with a single glance the age of all the world, that is, from the beginning to the present, and thereupon it grasps all the ages through the different successions of generations and the mutations of things as if upon a single line. Thence (at least, in a certain way) it ascends through the perception of faith into a reflection, to be achieved by whatever means possible, upon the greatness, beauty, and perpetuity of the Creator Himself.’ Vincent of Beauvais, ‘Libellus totius operis apologeticus’ in Préface Au Speculum Maius De Vincent De Beauvais: Réfraction Et Diffraction. ed. Serge Lusignan. Cahiers D’études Médiévales 5. (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1979), p. 121. On this work, see Mary FranklinBrown, Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012). ²¹ Stefano Riccioni, Il mosaico absidale di S. Clemente a Roma: ‘Exemplum’ della chiesa riformata (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’A lto Medioevo, 2006). ²² On bird images in Dante in the context of medieval bestiaries, see Giuseppe Ledda, Il bestiario dell’aldilà: Gli animali nella Commedia di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 2019).

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conceptual forms of the Commedia. As Zygmunt Barański has noted, in the Commedia, ‘il poeta sviluppò forme che evocano, allo stesso tempo, sia un senso dell’ordine del creato sia un’impressione della sua varietà di elementi organicamente collegati, e che chiariscono le somiglianze tra il macrocosmo e i vari microcosmi’.²³ The tree, such as the tree of the cross in San Clemente, was often a figure used as an illustration or conceptual map for interpreting knowledge and rendering visible the various relationships between diverse elements.²⁴ We might think of the Liber floridus of Lambert di Saint Omer, an encyclopaedic work dating from 1090–1120, in which a double tree is reflected from one page to another, with caritas at the base of the arbor bona and cupiditas at the base of the arbor mala.²⁵ The observer of the doubled tree is encouraged to note the correspondences between objects placed on branches in both lateral and vertical directions, along the single branches, and from one branch to another, even as the relationship with the trunk or root of the tree is centralized in this arrangement of correspondences. We may read the organizational structure of the Purgatorio or the Paradiso like the arbor bona that reflects the shape, in a contrasting way, of the arbor mala that is the Inferno. If we step back from the single canto or the single episode of the Commedia, and attempt a totalizing view on the work, as one might move one’s gaze from the single human figure milking a goat in the mosaics at San Clemente to see where that figure fits into the great lifegiving tree of the cross, that most humble element vitally connected to the immensity of the glittering whole, we see the single element of Inferno connected, by means of related imagery, to elements in the other two canticles. But gaining such a view is no simple matter, because of course Dante is no dualist, and each single image in his poem is linked not only to a series of opposing images on the other side of the damnation or salvation divide, but also to a range of biblical images reflected in positive and negative ways, and that are also again rebalanced by the interaction of elements in Purgatorio and Paradiso. ²³ ‘The poet developed forms that evoke a sense of the order of creation and, at the same time, an impression of the variety of elements that are organically connected, and that clarify the resemblances between the macrocosm and the various microcosms’ (my translation). Zygmunt Barański, ‘Dante fra “sperimentalismo” e “enciclopedismo” in L’enciclopedismo medievale, ed. Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1994), pp. 383–404. (p. 403) ²⁴ On the lignum vitae between text and image, as well as in-depth discussion of the uses of the tree schema, see Lina Bolzoni’s La rete delle immagini. For a broader discussion of the tree as a visual and mnemonic device, see Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm (eds.), The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). ²⁵ ff. 231v–232r. Available to be viewed online thanks to the Ghent University Library, https://lib .ugent.be/viewer/archive.ugent.be:018970A2-B1E8-11DF-A2E0-A70579F64438#?c=&m=&s=&cv= 240&xywh=4624%2C3461%2C4104%2C2643.

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A single element of the Commedia may come into better focus when put into conversation with a network of related elements both within and outside the poem. A gesture can often be key to finding one’s way into these networks of visual associations. In the fifth canto of Purgatorio, for instance, Bonconte describes the gesture that accompanies the words with which he dies ‘nel nome di Maria finì’ (‘all my words / ended in uttering Maria’s name’, Purg. 5, 100–1) by recounting what becomes of his body after the moment of his death:

Lo corpo mio gelato in su la foce trovò l’Archian rubesto; e quel sospinse nell’Arno, e sciolse al mio petto la croce ch’io fe’ di me quando ’l dolor mi vinse; voltòmmi per le ripe e per lo fondo, poi di sua preda mi coperse e cinse. (Purg. 5, 124–9)²⁶

When Bonconte speaks of the ‘la croce / ch’io fe’ di me quando ’l dolor mi vinse’, he evokes a familiar medieval iconography.²⁷ As Moshe Barasch notes in his work on Giotto, the gesture of crossing one’s arms across the chest enters visual programmes in late thirteenth-century Italy.²⁸ From the late twelfth century, the liturgical resonance of the gesture links the crossing of the arms with a slight bow as the priest pronounces the words, ‘Orate pro me peccatore’.²⁹ In Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, dating from around 1303–6, the Virgin crosses her arms across her chest in two key moments, as she is presented at the Temple as a young girl and at the Annunciation scene. Botticelli’s later illustration of Dante’s description of the bas-reliefs on the terrace of the proud depicts the Virgin with her arms crossed over her chest. In the Annunciation scene on the pulpit sculpted by Giovanni Pisano between 1298 ²⁶ ‘The Archiano—furious, in spate—had found / my body at its outlet, rigid, chill. / It drove this to the Arno, loosing there / the cross that, lost in agony, my arms had formed. / From bank to riverbed, it swirled me round, / then wrapped and hid me in its muddy spoil.’ ²⁷ Chiara Frugoni notes that this is the typical gesture of humility, particularly associated with the humility of the Annunciate Virgin, discussing a book of psalms from c. 1225, Bernardo Daddi’s Annunciation, and the Scrovegni Chapel. La voce delle immagini. Pillole iconografiche dal Medioevo (Turin: Einaudi, 2010), pp. 8–12. I have discussed the implications of Bonconte’s gesture for questions of Purgatorial personhood in my Dante’s Persons, pp. 63–76. ²⁸ Moshe Barasch, Giotto and the Language of Gesture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 78–9. ²⁹ Barasch, Giotto and the Language of Gesture, p. 79.

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and 1301 in Pistoia, it is Gabriel who crosses his arms.³⁰ Finally, in a slightly different inflection of the gesture, Christ is depicted with his arms crossed low at his waist or at times across his chest, in the traditional iconography of the Man of Sorrows.³¹ Bonconte thus repents in a single gesture that encapsulates the spiritual charge of these models, Mary’s humility and Christ’s sacrifice, offering himself into the hands of God. When we read in the absence of visual evidence, such as iconographical contexts for the dense network of Marian and Christic associations that interweaves the Purgatorio, we run the distinct risk of missing something crucial. The embodied landscape can suggest strong links between Bonconte’s description of making a cross of himself and Mary’s signature pose of humility; it might further supply the reader with a possible image of what Mary’s words, ‘Ecce ancilla Dei’, referenced in Purgatorio 10, look like in the form of a gesturing body. The fourteenth-century Egerton 943 manuscript of the Commedia shows that the illustrator felt that this gesture had crucial resonance for Dante beyond the scenes we have been considering thus far. In an illustration for Purgatorio 1, the illustrator depicts Dante, who has just entered the realm of Purgatory after his arduous journey through Hell, leaning gently forward with his arms crossed across his chest as Virgil wets his hands to wash Dante’s face (f. 64v; Figure 2.1). The Holkham manuscript of the Bodleian Library, also northern Italian, from the third quarter of the fourteenth century, also shows Dante kneeling with his arms crossed, but in this case crossed at waist level, and then at the level of his chest.³² The British Museum Add. 19587 likewise shows Dante with his arms crossed at chest level and standing as Virgil washes his faces and then (as illustrated separately) girds him with a reed.³³ The gesture of crossed arms is not indicated by Dante’s text here, which says only ‘porsi ver’ lui le guance lacrimose’ (‘[I] offered my tear-stained cheeks to meet his touch’, Purg. 1, 127). The illustrators have keenly understood the necessity of a sequence of specific gestures to characterize Dante’s entry into the realm of Purgatory and perhaps are showing us gestures they take as implicit in Dante’s narrative. The gestures are all intended to show forth an attitude of ³⁰ On this pulpit as a possible source for Dante, see John A. Scott, ‘Canto XII’ in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Gu¨ntert and Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Cesati, 2001), pp. 173–97 (pp. 186–91). ³¹ See Barasch, Giotto and the Language of Gesture, pp. 72–87. ³² Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Holkham misc. 48. The manuscript is fully digitized and available here: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/10974934-30a5-4495-857e-255760e5c5ff/. On this manuscript, see Laura Pasquini, ‘L’apparato illustrativo del MS. Holkham 514 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Misc. 48)’ in Dante visualizzato. Carte ridenti I: XIV secolo, ed. Rossend Arqués Corominas and Marcello Ciccuto (Florence: Cesati, 2017), pp. 237–57. ³³ 62r (Neapolitan, c. 1370). See Brieger, Meiss, and Singleton, Illuminated Manuscripts, vol. 2, p. 330.

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Figure 2.1 Virgil picking a reed to bind around Dante’s waist. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 64v (detail).

humility.³⁴ The gesture returns in the Egerton manuscript when Dante meets Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise, and thus provides a gestural frame for the canticle as a whole, marking, first, the necessary humility with which Dante enters the realm where penitence may occur, and, second, once he has reached the point in his journey when his sin has been healed, after his confession and his immersion, the natural humility with which he finally can approach Beatrice.³⁵ Throughout the Commedia, Dante carefully crafts links between his verbal gestural descriptions of sinners, penitents, and the blessed both within the architecture of the poem and externally, with known visual images of saintly or sinful comportments. Dante seeks to make his text one that is not simply to be read through, from beginning to end, as one might do with a novel today, but rather to render it a place of dwelling and meditation. Dante’s poem, like a fresco cycle or a programme of mosaics, seeks to find ways to allow the reader to memorize or interiorize the contents of the poem. He takes care to provide points of engagement by prompting the recognition of references to canonical iconographies or the elaboration of parallels that refer between scenes within the work as well as beyond it.³⁶ ³⁴ I have discussed this gestural link for the topos of humility in Dante’s Persons, p. 76. ³⁵ The gesture looks almost petulant in f. 119v, but is fully recognizable as the same gesture of humility noted in f. 64v and in the two illustrations on f. 121r. ³⁶ For authoritative studies on the art of memory in medieval culture, see F.A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966); Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and The Craft

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As is well known, medieval Aristotelian lines of thought understood memory as pictorial.³⁷ In addition to triggering memory through the physicality of the page, memories could be established and linked textually through imagined or illustrated pictorial images deriving from the content of the text. Frances Yates suggests that the Commedia could be thought of as, also, a memory system for vices and virtues, presenting a classification of vices and virtues in each canticle in a visual scheme.³⁸ Lina Bolzoni’s further work along these lines discusses encounters between Dante and characters throughout the Commedia as ‘imagines agentes’, tailored to help readers remember the precise nature of vices or virtues, just as a preacher’s summa relies upon memorable exempla. She notes that medieval classifications of vices and virtues were available in textual, visual, and hybrid visual and textual schemes.³⁹ As Bolzoni points out, the imagines agentes in the mnemonic tradition must be closely associated with the object to be remembered, and capable of striking the imagination with great force. The commonplace or the predictable are not effective.⁴⁰ This way of thinking about the Commedia gives us perspective on various narrative choices, such as why Dante is told that he is shown the ‘anime che son di fama note’ (‘those souls whose fame is widely known’, Par. 17.139) and why he is presented with Paradiso as he is, meeting a specific selection of souls in each heavenly sphere as he ascends. He is told that what he sees does not reflect the ‘reality’ of Paradiso, but has been spatialized and temporalized for his human needs.⁴¹ These choices not only make for better narrative poetry, they also make for better memorization.⁴² Gestures create affective portraits of individual sinners, penitents, and blessed souls that are memorable individually, but also have an enhanced affective charge through links to known iconic images as well as links, in positive and negative ways, to other images elsewhere in the Commedia. Anna of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini. More specifically on Dante, see Lina Bolzoni, ‘The Impassioned Memory in Dante’s Divine Comedy’ in Citation, Intertextuality, and Memory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vol. 2, ed. Yolanda Plumley and Giuliana Di Bacco (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 18–29. ³⁷ See De anima, De memoria et reminiscentia. See also Lina Bolzoni, ‘The Art of Memory and Literary Invention (Dante and Giulio Camillo)’ in Literature and Cultural Memory, ed. Mihaela Irimia, Dragos Manea, and Andreea Paris (Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 107–27. ³⁸ Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 95–6. See also William Franke, Dante and the Sense of Transgression: The Trespass of the Sign (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), p. 6. ³⁹ See Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini, pp. 61–83 and The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, ed. Mary J. Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). ⁴⁰ Bolzoni, ‘The Impassioned Memory’, p. 21. ⁴¹ See Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 186–8. ⁴² See also Carlo Delcorno, ‘Dante e Peraldo’ in Exemplum e letteratura: tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Bologna: Mulino, 1989), pp. 195–257; Bolzoni, ‘The Impassioned Memory’, pp. 20–1.

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Pegoretti offers the insight that figures in the Egerton manuscript, such as that of Bertran de Born, can function as an imago agens because the illustrations seem to concretize the procedure of the medieval ars memoria, in which series of images to be remembered were to be placed in a serial structure, like the arches of a portico.⁴³ Bertran de Born, like many others in the Inferno sequence, is depicted in an archway. In this case, the signature gesture, that is Bertran extending his decapitated head forward in his hand like a lantern, is foregrounded by the repeated structure of the architectural arches. When the reader pairs this horrific image with the words pronounced by Bertran that delineate the very ground of so many of Dante’s infernal images, ‘così s’osserva in me lo contrapasso’ (‘in me, then, counter-suffering can be seen’, Inf. 28, 142), the result is decidedly memorable.⁴⁴ But no matter how potent the single image, Dante is continually reminded by Virgil throughout his journey that he must not only focus on the individual he is engaging with, or the individual thing he sees, but should work to keep his gaze moving from one element to others. In Inferno, Virgil insists on pulling Dante onward and away from absorbing images, as at the opening of Canto 29: ‘che pur guate? / perché la vista tua più si soffolge / là giù tra l’ombre triste smozzicate’ (Inf. 29, 4–6).⁴⁵ While in Inferno, we might understand these promptings as necessitated by the danger of dwelling on examples of sin without the balancing effect of the examples of virtue that will come only in the next canticle, such warnings against excessive lingering persist in Purgatorio. In Purgatorio 10, for instance, Virgil prompts, ‘Non tener pur ad un loco la mente’ (Purg. 10, 46).⁴⁶ The directed movement of the gaze seems designed, as we will see, to foster an engaged interaction that forges links between episodes or scenes.⁴⁷ In a similar way, the Meditations on the Life of Christ seems to encourage the reader to ‘look’ as if from multiple viewpoints.⁴⁸ When the text elaborates a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount, the viewpoints offered to the reader or viewer are noticeably multiple: Look and reflect on the Lord Jesus humbly seated on the ground on the summit of that mount among the disciples surrounding Him …. Always try ⁴³ Pegoretti, Indagine, p. 126. See also Yates, The Art of Memory, and Harald Weinrich, La memoria di Dante (Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 1994); Lucia Battaglia Ricci, ‘Per una lettura dell’Inferno. Strutture narrative e arte della memoria’, Rivista di studi danteschi, 3 (2003): 227–52. ⁴⁴ See Weinrich, La memoria di Dante. ⁴⁵ ‘Are you still staring on? / Why is your seeing plunged so deep among / such miserable, mutilated shades?’ ⁴⁶ ‘Don’t keep your mind fixed only on one part.’ ⁴⁷ On the multisensorial links between cantos 10–12 of the Purgatorio and the importance of the movement of Dante as viewer, see Marcello Ciccuto ‘“Saxa loquuntur”. Aspetti dell’ “evidentia” nella retorica visiva di Dante’ in Dante e la retorica, pp. 151–66. ⁴⁸ Mulvaney, ‘Gesture and Audience’, pp. 178–220 (p. 182).

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As Mulvaney points out, in this proliferation of viewpoints, the reader is asked to begin from a distance, surveying the whole scene, then to look closely at Christ’s face, then to see what it looks like to look upon him and to be in his presence by drawing their gaze close to look with attention at the faces of the disciples. Finally, the viewpoint withdraws to offer a different sort of affective prompt in the image of the chicks trailing after a hen.⁵⁰ Thomas Bestul suggests that the wide variety of Passion texts, including Passion plays, collections of sermons, and visionary literature, established a ‘dynamic interrelationship’, or a ‘reciprocal relationship’ with visual representations of Christ’s life.⁵¹ It is my claim that Dante’s poem participates in this reciprocal relationship with the visual art of his time, depicting events from the life of Christ and Mary alongside events from his own time. The poem does not stand alone, but works in concert with other representations in other media; the reader of the poem, also a viewer of art in churches, makes connections that traverse the textual and visual fields to fully participate in the poem and its devotions. Christopher Kleinhenz has discussed the potential influence of the mosaics in the Baptistery of Florence on Dante’s thought, rather than simply as a source for particular images in the Commedia. The young Dante would have had ample opportunity to contemplate the mosaics of the Baptistery of Florence, and this youthful contemplation could have prompted not only a visual template for individual images, such as the immediately visible parallel with the depiction of Satan, but could also have suggested textual forms, modes of

⁴⁹ The Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illuminated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, trans. Isa Ragusa, ed. Rosalie B. Green (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 153–5. ⁵⁰ Mulvaney, ‘Gesture and Audience’, pp. 182–3. ⁵¹ Thomas Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 1–2.

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construction, and multilayered modes of interpretation and reading.⁵² In the baptistery, Dante observed five zones of an eight-sided cupola, with fifteen episodes and four different narrations. The placement of each single episode is organized in such a way that it can be read within its own horizontal narrative, or in a vertical relationship with the narratives above or below it, offering the possibility of picking out typological and allegorical relationships. To give one immediately visible example, we might consider the parallelisms constructed between the vertically aligned images of Joseph in prison and John in prison, as depicted on the eastern section of the cupola. Any reading of John’s life, along the lowest and nearest of the five registers, cannot but refer upwards to the third register as the eye is drawn to the visibly repeated squared pattern of the prison bars showing Joseph’s captivity as well as John’s.⁵³ The Scrovegni Chapel must be considered in different terms. Unlike the Baptistery in Florence, we cannot be sure that Dante saw it, but we can think of the chapel as a contemporary narrative and meditative devotional construction, similar to the Commedia.⁵⁴ The network of meaning of the chapel has, in fact, been directly compared to the Commedia in terms of its ‘consistency and symmetry’.⁵⁵ The chapel explicitly sets itself up as a programme of models and antimodels. The most immediate of these are the depictions of the vices and the virtues that run along each side of the chapel, each virtue located across from and in contrast with its opposing vice. The more complex narrative scenes from the lives of Mary and Christ in the registers above work more subtly but in similar ways, by mechanisms of opposition and recall.⁵⁶ Michael Alpatoff ’s study points out the error of reproducing the frescoes one by one, as if they were a series of separate panel pictures;⁵⁷ Alpatoff concludes that Giotto ‘did his best to coordinate the pictures of Christ’s Childhood with those of his Passion. In almost all the frescoes of the two lower series ⁵² Christopher Kleinhenz, ‘On Dante and the Visual Arts’ in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), pp. 274–92 (p. 282). See also George Corbett, ‘The Vertical Axis: Inferno x, Purgatorio x, and Paradiso x’ in Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (Oxford: Legenda, 2013), pp. 80–5. See also Emilio Pasquini, ‘Tra biografia e poesia: Riflessioni a margine del “bel San Giovanni” di Dante’, Rivista di letteratura italiana, 33.3 (2015): 9–20, in which the author reflects on specific episodes that might have captured the attention of the young Dante, (particularly p. 17), and Laura Pasquini, Pigliare occhi, pp. 178–82, also on elements of the mosaics that might be of reference for Dante, specifically the hierarchies of angelic intelligences. ⁵³ Vault, eastern section, available to view here: https://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/zgothic/ mosaics/7baptist/index.html. ⁵⁴ On the public role of the images in the chapel, see Jacobus, ‘Giotto’s “Annunciation”’, and Eva Frojmovic, ‘Giotto’s Circumspection’, Art Bulletin, 89 (2007): 195–210. ⁵⁵ Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, ‘Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb: The Program of Giotto’s Arena Chapel in Padua’, Art Bulletin, 80.2 (1998): 274–91 (p. 274). ⁵⁶ See Michel Alpatoff, ‘The Parallelism of Giotto’s Frescoes’, Art Bulletin, 29.3 (1974): 149–54. ⁵⁷ Alpatoff, ‘The Parallelism of Giotto’s Frescoes’, p. 149.

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this coordination is quite apparent.’⁵⁸ Alpatoff compares Giotto’s constructed parallelisms between scenes with Dante’s descriptions of the constructed relationships between the bas-reliefs on the terrace of the proud in Purgatory, or the sequence of visions on the terrace of the wrathful. In both cases, Alpatoff claims, these are described as if they are a ‘sequence of pictures’, to be regarded carefully while transferring attention from one to another, citing that passage from Purgatorio 10, ‘Non tener pur ad un loco la mente’ (‘Don’t keep your mind fixed only on one part’, 46). For Alpatoff, this may be a valuable clue to how Dante and Giotto’s contemporaries were accustomed to contemplate sequences of reliefs or frescoes,⁵⁹ mindfully putting them in relation with one another. Just as Alpatoff suggests that it is an error to read the single frescoes of the chapel in isolation, when we analyze the cantos or episodes of Dante’s Commedia one by one, we treat them, wrongly, as isolatable units.⁶⁰ Instead, we should consider the single cantos of the Commedia, or, better, the salient scenes of encounter in the Commedia, as if they were single episodes in a visual programme like the programme of mosaics in the Baptistery of Florence or the frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, episodes to be read in terms of sequences and parallelisms. I am suggesting that these Dantean episodes, these particularly memorable images of encounter, can be read not only ‘horizontally’, within the narrative of the pilgrim’s progress through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, or within their specific sequence of images like the sequentially described scenes of the bas-reliefs on the terrace of pride, but also against parallel or contrasting scenes located in other canticles.⁶¹ The parallels, I suggest, become noticeable when the reader, trained in the practices of memorizing, visualizing, and engaging with large systems of text or image, notes a correspondence between foregrounded images. Often, a cognitively resonant description of gesture serves to make an image leap to mind and chime with another related bodily sign elsewhere in the text. The sort of textual choreography I am attempting to delineate here can be further scaffolded by thinking through other parallels with work on the choreographies of viewing visual art. Donal Cooper and Janet Robson have shown ⁵⁸ Alpatoff, ‘The Parallelism of Giotto’s Frescoes’, p. 150. ⁵⁹ Alpatoff, ‘The Parallelism of Giotto’s Frescoes’, pp. 153–4. ⁶⁰ For discussions of tendencies to read cantos singly, as in the long-standing Lectura Dantis, and other modes of reading cantos in groups, see Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, ed. George Corbett and Heather Webb, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015–7), especially the introductions to the first two volumes, as well as Esperimenti danteschi, ed. Simone Invernizzi, Benedetta Quadrio, and Tommaso Montorfano, 3 vols. (Milan: Marietti, 2008–10). ⁶¹ For a textual set of readings across cantos of the same number in all three canticles, see Corbett and Webb (eds.), Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy.

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the visual links between tiers of the programme at Assisi.⁶² They show, to give one example, how the Stigmatization depicting Saint Francis reveals links between the fresco cycles of the basilica. In the Stigmatization, Francis kneels and looks up and to the right at the Christ-Seraph, ‘but if the diagonal of his gaze is continued beyond the limits of the pictorial frame, it leads up to the first scene on the middle tier of the next bay, the Crucifixion’.⁶³ Francis can thus be witnessed with a double vision that extends beyond his own narrative band and into the Passion cycle. As Cooper and Robson put it, ‘By means of such visual links between the tiers, the overall nave programme continually becomes more than the sum of its individual parts.’⁶⁴ Likewise, the Commedia is a text that continuously points from one moment in the narrative to another moment in the narrative, often in another canticle. When we read the poem beyond the limits of the frame of the canto or of the canticle, we see how it constructs itself as much more than the sum of its individual parts. What happens if we take this as a new way of seeing, as a new way to look at and in the poem? As Beth Mulvaney has shown, the composition of Duccio’s Maesta works by means of deft choreography, guiding the viewer’s reading of the Passion through calculated repetitions of spatial constructions and figural compositions. She notes that gestures and poses are depicted with precision so that changes to those gestures and postures can be read with their due significance in their subsequent iterations. It thus becomes possible to track or compare emotions and reactions across sequences, noting parallelisms and contrasts.⁶⁵ Duccio, Mulvaney argues, makes such subtle use of gesture to invite the viewer to imaginatively continue the actions of suspended animation, focusing particularly on ‘speaking’ gestures that draw attention to dialogues and interactions as in medieval drama.⁶⁶ Throughout this book, I seek to draw out examples in the Commedia of the ways in which Dante constructs gestural visual links of similarity and contrast between related episodes. Here, as a first foray into this methodology, I propose a brief exploration of a set of linked images that I believe depend ⁶² See Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), and Donal Cooper ‘Preaching amidst Pictures: Visual Contexts for Sermons in Late Medieval Tuscany’ in Optics, Ethics, and Art in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Looking into Peter of Limoges’s Moral Treatise on the Eye ed. Herbert L. Kessler, Arthur J. Russell, and Richard Newhauser (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2018), pp. 29–46. ⁶³ Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, p. 131. ⁶⁴ Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, p. 131. ⁶⁵ Mulvaney, ‘Gesture and Audience’, p. 178. ⁶⁶ Mulvaney, ‘Gesture and Audience’, p. 179.

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on the reader making a visual connection between gestural depictions of vice and virtue. This parallel is found in Inferno 10, Purgatorio 10, and Paradiso 10.⁶⁷ As already mentioned, it is in Purgatorio 10 that Virgil directs Dante ‘Non tener pur ad un loco la mente’ (‘Don’t keep your mind fixed only on one part’, Purg. 10.46) when he is engaged in the contemplation of the carved image of Mary at the Annunciation. As spiritually efficacious as this contemplation may be, Virgil prompts Dante to move beyond it. Even a single image as blessed as this one does not work alone. There are compelling reasons to suspect that Virgil’s instructions here could be meant more broadly for the reader of the poem. Gervase Rosser has argued that ‘The Divine Comedy used the medium of poetry to educate its Trecento reader in how to see.’⁶⁸ Thus, while much of the critical tradition has worried the problem of the primacy of text over image or vice versa as asserted in the text, it may prove much more profitable to think of the Commedia as working in much the same way as visual art.⁶⁹ Our engagement with visual art can teach us to see the Commedia as a programme made up of many parts that point to one another in various ways. We can then train our eyes and mind to move between those parts in the most fruitful ways, opening up new hermeneutical possibilities. So if we read the Commedia in the same way as we read one or more fresco cycles in a single architectural space, we must think of ourselves as viewers as well as readers. If we take Dante’s self-representation in the act of viewing as our guide, we see that he obeys Virgil’s injunction: Per ch’i’ mi mossi col viso, e vedea di retro da Maria, da quella costa onde m’era colui che mi movea, un’altra storia ne la roccia imposta; per ch’io varcai Virgilio, e fe’mi presso, a ciò che fosse alli occhi mei disposta (Purg. 10, 49–54)⁷⁰ ⁶⁷ For vertical parallels between the se cantos, see Corbett, ‘The Vertical Axis’, pp. 80–5 and K.P. Clarke, ‘Humility and the (P)arts of Art’ in Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, Vol. 1, ed. George Corbett and Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), pp. 203–21. ⁶⁸ Gervase Rosser, ‘Duccio and Dante on the Road to Emmaus’, Art History, 35.3 (2012): 474–97, (p. 482). ⁶⁹ See Teodolinda Barolini, ‘Re-presenting What God Presented’, pp. 43–62. ⁷⁰ ‘And so, in sight, I moved. And I could see, / behind Maria, on the side where he, / in urging me to make a move, now stood, / set in the rock, another narrative. / Passing by Virgil, I came near to that, / so that it stood displayed before my eyes.’

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There is extensive kinesic detail here to describe how Dante looks, follows the direction to look at something else, and moves his body to look at the next scene. Dante is careful to make the reader aware of the positioning of Dante, Virgil, and the scenes carved in the side of the mountain. Then follows an ekphrastic description of further scenes in the marble. After viewing three scenes, Dante tells us that ‘mi dilettava di guardare / l’imagini di tante umilitadi’ (‘I, in all delight, still gazed upon / these images of great humility’, 97–8). In short, they emerge as examples of humility when they are connected together by Dante’s gaze and the movements of his body as he places himself before each scene. Meaning and spiritual delight is generated by the connection of images and the physical work on the part of the penitent to move from one image to another. Let us examine a sequence of gestures that seems to align around the axis of the cantos numbered 10. These are gestures that a reader, following the cues of Dante’s experience as described here, might wish to link together visually and produce the effect of cumulative meaning through contrast as well as similarity. In Inferno 10, the circle of the heretics, we witness the grief of a father who hears the news, as he understands it, that his son has died. Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti collapses and falls back in despair: Quando s’accorse d’alcuna dimora ch’i’ faceva dinanzi ala risposta, supin ricadde e più non parve fora. (Inf. 10, 70–2)⁷¹

His neighbour in the tomb they share, Farinata degli Uberti, is unmoved: Ma quell’altro magnanimo, a cui posta restato m’era, non mutò aspetto, né mosse collo, né piegò sua costa. (Inf. 10, 73–5)⁷²

Farinata’s upright stance disregards his neighbour’s suffering. He is impassive, in the disdainful elevation of his chest and forehead, ‘el s’ergea col petto e con la fronte / com’ avesse l’inferno a gran dispitto’ (Inf. 10, 35–6)⁷³. His posture must ⁷¹ ‘But then, in noticing that slight delay / which came before I offered my reply, / he fell back flat, and did not re-appear.’ ⁷² ‘The other noble soul (at whose command / I’d come to rest) in no way changed expression. / He neither moved his neck nor bent his waist.’ ⁷³ ‘He, brow raised, was thrusting out his chest, / as though he held all Hell in high disdain.’

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be read in the light of the iconography of salvation that is parodied here, as so often happens in the exposition of contrapasso in Inferno.⁷⁴ Dante provides detail to render the parallel visible. Farinata’s proud posture, visible from the waist up, ‘Vedi là Farinata che s’è dritto: / da la cintola in sù tutto ’l vedrai’ (Inf. 10, 32–3),⁷⁵ is legible against the iconographic motif of the imago pietatis, showing Christ rising from the tomb and usually visible from the waist up. In the imago pietatis in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, a mosaic panel of mysterious and contested origins, Christ emerges from the tomb to waist level, but notably hangs his head with such limpness that it seems to rest on his shoulder. His arms are crossed, displaying his wounds.⁷⁶ It is precisely this resurrection that Farinata’s heresy denies, precisely this humility that he scorns with his rigid, upright body and brow. As against the traditional iconography of the imago pietatis, we can see how Dante’s brief but deft somatic description provides just enough information for a reader to make a link to a known image and note an important divergence from that holy image. If there is a certain density of postural description in Inferno 10 to effectively show the reader, with the aid of known iconography, something of heresy embodied, there is an equal density of gestural and postural description on the terrace of pride (Purgatorio 10-12), to show humility embodied. We have already discussed the gesturality of the Virgin at the Annunciation; and the extreme inclinatio of prideful penitents who must adopt a postural opposition to their vice in order to heal the soul. Will the reader, visually trained to make comparisons across registers, narratives, and architectural spaces, also make a further leap and compare the extreme bowing of the prideful to the rigid uprightness of Farinata? Might that reader dwell on the complete absence of neighbourly relation in the Farinata episode of Inferno 10, in which Farinata’s proud brow and chest remain impassive and unbent after his neighbour Cavalcanti crumbles to the floor of the tomb that imprisons him? Such meditation could invite comparison to the opening of Purgatorio 12 when the pilgrim bows low and goes along with Oderisi, in complete unison of posture and step: ‘Di pari, come buoi che vanno a giogo, / m’andava io con quell’ anima

⁷⁴ See Robert M. Durling, ‘Farinata and the Body of Christ’, Stanford Italian Review, 2.1 (1981): 5–35; Anthony K. Cassell, ‘Farinata’ in Dante’s Fearful Art of Justice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), pp. 15–31. ⁷⁵ ‘See there, upright, risen, Farinata. / From cincture upwards you will see him whole.’ ⁷⁶ Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art. Vol. 2, The Passion of Jesus Christ, trans. Janet Seligman (London: Lund Humphries, 1971), p. 199, understands this to be a thirteenth-century icon, while Hans Belting, in The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1990), pp. 36–8, considers it a fourteenth-century Byzantine production that moved to Italy around 1380. An Umbrian diptych from 1255–60 in the National Gallery displays a similar representation of Christ’s pose, visible from the waist up, with a hanging head and crossed arms.

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carca’ (Purg. 12, 1–2).⁷⁷ Postures, gestures, and bodily signs make themselves make sense in connection with immediate circumstances, in conversation. Here, the emphasis is on Dante’s ability to respond to Oderisi’s posture of suffering penance and to share that posture. Only a few lines later, after his interview with Oderisi is concluded, Virgil asks Dante to straighten his body again; this sequence only acquires meaning and is only efficacious in this set of specific situations. In Purgatorio 12, such instructions invite us to note Dante’s responsiveness to those around him. Elsewhere in the Commedia, in fact, bowing in a self-referential context can be understood in the negative sense of folding to external pressure. In Inferno 6, the poet recounts, ‘Noi passavam su per l’ombre che adona / la greve pioggia’ (Inf. 6, 34–5).⁷⁸ The verb ‘adonare’ here indicates the way in which the filthy rain, the waste of consumption, weighs down the shades of the gluttons. On the terrace of the proud in Purgatorio, the shades pray, ‘Nostra virtù che di legger s’adona / non spermentar’ (Purg. 11, 19–20, emphasis mine).⁷⁹ Here, while their aerial bodies are bent to extremes, they pray that their virtue, so easily ‘bent’, might not be tested. Allowing one’s virtue to be bent is qualified as a sign of weakness, taken in this case as an elaboration or meditation on ‘lead us not into temptation’. So what is it that distinguishes between these understandings of bowing? It is precisely the immediate context, the response to others in the particular situation. In this respect, it is helpful to turn again to The Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic. Dominic’s first way of prayer: was to bow humbly before the altar, as if Christ, whom the altar signifies, were really and personally present, and not just in a symbolic way… . He taught the brethren to do this whenever they passed before a crucifix showing the humiliation of Christ, so that Christ, who was so greatly humbled for us, should see us humbled before his exaltation.⁸⁰

The passage speaks powerfully to the sense of bowing that we have been documenting in the Purgatorio. The treatise shows that bowing before the altar or the crucifix is a response to a feeling of being in the presence of ⁷⁷ ‘Paired up, like oxen yoked to move as one, / so onward with that burdened soul I went.’ ⁷⁸ ‘Over such shadows, flat in that hard rain, / we travelled onwards.’ ⁷⁹ ‘The powers we have (so easily subdued) / do not make trial of.’ ⁸⁰ The translation is from Tugwell, The Nine Ways of Prayer. ‘Primus uidelicet humiliando se ante altare, ac si Christus per altare significatus realiter et personaliter esset ibi, non tantum in signo … Et hoc docebat fieri a fratribus dum transirent ante humiliationem crucifixi, ut Christus pro nobis humiliatus maxime uideret nos humiliatos sue maiestati’ (pp. 82, 83).

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Christ, immediately removing the individual from an isolated sense of self. The bowing corresponds—responds—to Christ’s foundational act of humility. A viewer cannot simply passively contemplate Christ’s sacrifice, or ignore the crucifix, Dominic’s example seems to intimate: they must act. The penitent, in the presence of the crucifix, must physically respond to Christ’s humility. We might also consider, in the set of images of humility in Purgatorio, the image of David dancing before the Ark. The scene of the Annunciation, the first image of humility, was frequently depicted in the visual art of Dante’s time, and therefore Dante could easily rely on the reader’s memories of seeing Annunciations depicted in order to reference parenthetically the ‘atti’, or gestures, of Mary and Gabriel without describing them. But David dancing before the Ark was less frequently depicted in frescoes or sculpture, though it could be found in illustrated Bibles and Psalters.⁸¹ Dante takes a bit more time over this second ekphrastic scene in order to produce greater kinesic and gestural detail where easy, immediate visual reference points might be lacking for the general reader or listener:⁸² Lì precedeva al benedetto vaso, trescando alzato, l’umile salmista, e più e men che re era ’n quel caso; di contra effigïata, ad una vista d’un gran palazzo, Micòl ammirava sì come donna dispettosa e trista. (Purg. 10, 64–9)⁸³

‘Trescando alzato’ has created some debate among readers as to what exactly is lifted, whether garments or limbs, suggesting that David’s dancing is one of those gesturally sticky moments that lodge themselves in the reader’s mind.⁸⁴ In his movement out of stability and staid regal posture, David is ‘più e men che re […] in quel caso’. I would emphasize ‘in quel caso’, a clear insistence of the particularity of the situation. David, acting against dignity but in spiritual joy, even giullaresco joy, is visually countered and indeed gesturally enhanced ⁸¹ See James H. McGregor, ‘Reappraising Ekphrasis in Purgatorio 10’, Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, 121 (2003): 25–41 (p. 27). ⁸² Compare with Dante’s description of the Trajan scene. On this, see Nancy J. Vickers, ‘Seeing Is Believing: Gregory, Trajan, and Dante’s Art’, Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, 101 (1983): 67–85. ⁸³ ‘Before that vessel of all holiness, / the humble psalmist danced, his robe tucked up—both more and less than king in all of this. / Then Michal, opposite, was gazing down, / as from some window of the royal court, / an effigy of rancour and disdain.’ ⁸⁴ See Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi’s commentary on this point, p. 302, n. 65.

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Figure 2.2 The Ark of the Covenant in procession. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 80v (detail).

by the contrasting figure of Michal, who like Farinata, takes a pose of ‘dispetto’, gesturally at odds with those around her.⁸⁵ Egerton 943, folio 80v shows Michal as if incorporated into her ‘gran palazzo’, a tower directly above David (Figure 2.2). While the king’s exposed leg is thrown out in an ungainly point to his right and his arms pop up from the ⁸⁵ Marcello Ciccuto notes the contrast between the dynamism of David’s dance and Michal’s inertia in ‘Saxa loquuntur’, p. 163.

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elbows, loose at the wrists and gesticulating inward towards his face, Michal, centred above him, turns away with her palm against her cheek and her other arm closed in on her body. Where David’s leg is bared to the knee in its joyful exuberance, Michal’s body is covered, framed, and enclosed by the rigid lines of the square tower. She is isolated and unable to encounter the significance of the Ark, as against the utter openness of David’s bodily expression. From this array of gestures of response and unresponsive isolation, let us turn now to the opportunity for the reader to choose their own mode of response at the opening of Paradiso 10. Dante speaks of the celestial spheres in which all was made with such divine order that ‘ch’esser non pote / sanza gustar di lui, chi ciò rimira’ (5–6).⁸⁶ In other words, simply contemplation of the divine order in the heavens allows the viewer to taste, to experience the divine. Viewing is participation. And from here Dante moves again into a description of modes of looking, of a choreography of the gaze: Leva dunque, lettore, all’alte rote meco la vista, dritto a quella parte dove l’un moto e l’altro si percuote; e lì comincia a vagheggiare nell’arte di quel maestro che dentro a sé l’ama, tanto che mai da lei l’occhi non parte. Vedi come da indi si dirama l’oblico cerchio che i pianeti porta, per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama. (7–15)⁸⁷

The reader’s view is now directed to the heavens, in contrast to the extreme bowing of Purgatorio 10. Here, in vertical correspondence with the purgative experience of keeping one’s eyes to the earth, the reader or viewer is asked to look up and to admire the divine art that is the heavens. Note the ‘vedi’: the injunction to ‘see’, to follow the poet’s gaze. Dante’s Paradiso, in fact, seeks in myriad ways to involve the reader in a community that sees together. The key gesture here is looking up and looking together, against the disdainful ⁸⁶ ‘In such clear order it can never be, / that we, in wonder, fail to taste him there.’ ⁸⁷ ‘Lift up your eyes, then, reader, and, along with / me, look to those wheels directed to that part / where motions—yearly and diurnal—clash. / And there, entranced, begin to view the skill / the Master demonstrates. Within Himself, / He loves it so, His looking never leaves. / Look! Where those orbits meet, there branches off / the slanting circles that the planets ride / to feed and fill the world that calls on them.’

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lifting of Farinata’s brow (‘levò le ciglia’), the gaze here is lifted with others, ‘Leva dunque, lettore, a l’alte rote / meco la vista,’ the poet insists. Such seeing together entails shared affect, ‘vagheggiare’, that arises from this act of devotional contemplation. This gestural act of looking together may share its collective impulse with the laudi spirituali and particularly those that focus on the gestures of sorrow of the Virgin. Cyrilla Barr documents the practices of singing in confraternity ceremonies and processions, drawing attention to ‘Levate gl’ochi e resguardate’, found in Cortona MS 705. The text goes in part as follows:

Levate gl ochi resguardate morto e cristo ogi per nui le mano e i pie en croce a chiavate aperto el lato o triste nui piangiamo et feciamo lamento e nariamo del suo tormento.⁸⁸

This documentation of lived practice emphasizing the shared gesture of looking together, of fixing one’s attentions and affects on a shared object of devotion, may help draw out our sense of what the act of looking up together with Dante might mean. Here in the laude too, the coordination of bodily movement and attention is understood to provoke a communal affective state of mourning: ‘piangiamo e feciamo lamento’. The act of looking up together, of raising our eyes as the text demands, depends on a set of shared visual resources and practices. This is not simply the visual reference to shared known iconographies, but also practices of looking and reading that involve moving the gaze and the body from one image to another and crafting semantic and affectively charged links in the resonances formed between those images. This means, I would argue, seeing with the text and not simply reading it in a narrowly literary sense.

⁸⁸ ‘Lift up your eyes and look / Christ has died today for us / his hands and his feet nailed to the cross / his side opened, O how sad we are / let us weep and lament / and narrate his torment’ (my translation). Cyrilla Barr, The Monophonic Lauda and the Lay Religious Confraternities of Tuscany and Umbria in the Late Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1988), pp. 19–21. See also Strand, Steel, and Davidson, ‘Demonstration Performance’, p. 290.

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Illustrations of the Commedia as readings I have already had occasion to make reference to illustrations in the Egerton manuscript 943 of the British Library in order to discuss the ways in which a reader may, in response to the careful deployment of gestural detail in the Commedia, visualize gestural interactions, as in the case of the meeting with Statius, or the penitential preparations upon the shore of Mount Purgatory. Throughout this book, I will turn to some of the early illustrations of the Commedia for examples of existing gestural readings of episodes in the Commedia. There is a wealth of possibilities among these illustrations, but I have focused particular attention on the Egerton Commedia and Sandro Botticelli’s Paradiso illustrations, due to the particular emphasis in both sets of illustrations on the precise depiction of gestures and gazes.⁸⁹ It goes without saying that the two sets of illustrations arise from very different cultural moments, and that each reads the Commedia through a lens conditioned by time and place. The depictions of the Egerton manuscript are simple, while Botticelli’s drawings, even if incomplete, rejoice in myriad nuances of line. Despite all these differences, both sets of illustrations share keen attention to a wide variety of gestures as their primary narrative mode for recounting the spiritual journey of the Commedia. Of course, we do not know what Dante’s intentions for the layout of his poem might have been, and whether he might have imagined it presented to readers with visual apparatus. But, as Gianfranco Contini put it, the poem has the qualities of a ‘libro illustrabile, cioè un libro autorizzato dall’autore all’illustrazione perché contiene passi capitali in cui si è invitati a una rappresentazione visuale, basti pensare ai rilievi del Purgatorio’.⁹⁰ Amilcare Iannucci aptly called it a text with a ‘producerly’ quality, referring to the ‘never-ending potential of the text to enable’⁹¹ visual representation. These invitations to visual representation may trigger individual readers to imagine a scene, or to mentally perform it. Some readers may even recreate in

⁸⁹ On the Egerton’s attention to gesture, see Pegoretti, ‘Un Dante “domenicano”’, p. 130. For a broader set of illustrations, see Brieger, Meiss, and Singleton (eds.), Illuminated Manuscripts. For references concerning Botticelli’s attention to gesture, see the discussions in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 of the present study. ⁹⁰ ‘An illustratable book, that is, a book that is authorized for illustration by the author because it contains important passages in which one is invited to create a visual representation—it is enough to think of the bas-reliefs of Purgatorio’ (my translation). Gianfranco Contini, ‘Un nodo della cultura medievale: la serie “Roman de la Rose”–“Fiore”–“Divina Commedia”’ in Un’idea di Dante: Saggi danteschi (Turin: Einaudi, 2001 [1970]), pp. 245–83 (p. 278). ⁹¹ Amilcare A. Iannucci, ‘Dante and Hollywood’ in Dante, Cinema & Television, ed. Amilcare A. Iannucci (London: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 3–20 (p. 4).

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some physical way, such as illustration, the key interaction in a scene as a way of taking part in that passage of text. Throughout this study, as we examine gesturally potent episodes in the text, these ‘passi capitali’, we will turn to existing illustrations to see how various readers have worked through and elaborated the content of the text. Illustrations can work as a kind of ‘commento figurato’,⁹² making interpretative decisions about elements left ambiguous by the text, such as deciding what exactly it is that Dante does with his arms when Virgil helps him into a pose of reverence, as we saw earlier. But illustrations can equally open possibilities, as we shall see with the example of the gluttons of Purgatory in Chapter 4. Contini makes the distinction that, while the Roman de la Rose needs visualization for exegetical purposes, the Commedia ‘punta sulla memoria, cioè vuole percuotere e dilacerare la memoria del lettore’.⁹³ While Dante has described one particular gesture in the case of the gluttons, the illustrations offer a range of gestural articulations of what he describes, showing how medieval and early modern readers enacted a systematic, meditative working through of penitential possibilities prompted by the text.

Dante and visual hagiography Throughout the Commedia, Dante’s imagines agentes, frequently depicted in memorably gestural terms, propose a new canon of exemplary vices and virtues, like those depicted in the Scrovegni Chapel. At the same time, this new canon of examples is never generic, and each of these figures, while embodying a vice or virtue, remains an individual. In the case of those figures in Purgatory and Paradise, they are Dante’s beati. All of those in Dante’s Paradiso are explicitly called ‘beati’, but given that all those in Purgatory will eventually enter Paradise, they too form part of Dante’s local, particular catalogue of exemplary blessed souls.⁹⁴ The thirteenth century was a time of the birth and diffusion of ‘leggendari moderni’ (saints’ lives) alongside procedures of canonization. Three Dominican leggendari, those of Giovanni di Mailly, Bartolomeo da Trento, and Iacopo da Varazze, were published between 1261 and 1266. ⁹² See P. Brieger, ‘Pictorial Commentaries to the “Commedia”’, in Brieger, Meiss, and Singleton, Illuminated Manuscripts, pp. 81–113. ⁹³ ‘[…] aims at the memory, that is, it intends to strike and to tear into the memory of the reader’. Contini, ‘Un nodo’, p. 279. ⁹⁴ See Francesco Santi, ‘Dante agiografo e l’enciclopedismo del XIII secolo’, in Dante e le enciclopedie medievali, ed. Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei Frati Minori Conventuali, 2022).

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The works were enormously pervasive, as we can see from the numerous manuscripts that exist to the present day, and the evidence of a multitude of translations into different vernaculars. These exemplary lives were transmitted even more broadly than the heft of textual remnants suggests, as they were diffused in medieval preaching as well.⁹⁵ Until the thirteenth century, beati were always local and each diocese would single out local exemplary figures; Giovanni di Mailly includes many saints from Burgundy, Bartolomeo features many from Trento, while Iacopo aims for a more universal approach. If we look at Dante’s Paradiso as a sort of leggendario of its own, Dante’s choices are interesting. The distinctions we draw today between saints who have been through the processes of canonization and other uncanonized holy figures are, for the poem, not entirely relevant. Of the ‘beati’ in Paradiso, many seem to be Dante’s personal choices: they appear neither in biblical sources nor in the leggendari.⁹⁶ When we consider that all those in Purgatorio will also eventually become part of this group in Paradiso, the choice of exemplary figures grows even more personal. So what are the procedures that Dante employs to introduce his personal beati to the reader and to render that subset of his images as memorable as those of great fame? He meticulously places them in a relationship of correspondence with better-known national or international cults, and often, this relationship is constructed gesturally. Just as the mosaic programme in the baptistery in Florence carefully establishes visual links between the stories of Joseph and John, Dante’s gestural depictions of his beati and purganti are to be considered, I would argue, as if located in a similar parallel correspondence with iconic depictions of better-known saints. Finding gestural correspondences between modern-day holy or penitent figures and earlier saints or Christ himself is a common practice in religious teaching and indeed can extend to any penitent or pious individual, as a somatic mode of linking one’s own life to devotional models. As Catherine Pickstock puts it, ‘Not only can the message only be comprehended when it is personally recollected within the soul of the disciple; in this case, the message is none other than the life of the teacher himself, and can only be comprehended when it is non-identically recreated in the life of the disciple.’⁹⁷

⁹⁵ On the interactions between Dante’s text and the culture of preaching, see Nicolò Maldina, In pro del mondo: Dante, la predicazione e i generi della letteratura religiosa medieval (Rome: Salerno, 2017). ⁹⁶ For a more detailed discussion, see Francesco Santi, ‘Dante agiografo’. ⁹⁷ Catherine Pickstock, Repetition and Identity: The Literary Agenda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 147.

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One example of this practice may be seen in the diptych of the blessed Andrea Gallerani.⁹⁸ The pair of panels was painted by an artist close to Guido da Siena around 1275 and is currently located in Siena, in the Pinacoteca Nazionale. Gallerani was a local holy man associated with both the Dominican and Franciscan orders who died in 1251 and may have been beatified but was never canonized.⁹⁹ Anne Dunlop points out that the local holy man is ‘promoted through the inclusion of references to much more famous saints’.¹⁰⁰ Gallerani’s prayer before a crucifix is paralleled with Dominic’s prayer for the recovery of Blessed Reginald as well as Reginald’s vision of the Virgin, both shown directly above, in vertical correspondence, with Gallerani. Gallerani’s kneeling figure is closely aligned with Dominic’s kneeling figure, carefully drawing the eye from one to the next. In both panels, the kneeling figure is presented as engaged with another figure to the right and above, creating a sense of upward diagonal movement. So Gallerani directs his attention to the crucifix, while Dominic’s prayer, also before a crucifix, reaches through his gaze towards Reginald, whose position with respect to Dominic is analogous to the crucifix’s position with respect to Gallerani. In the Dominic scene, the upward diagonal movement turns back towards the left in the vision of the Virgin, who is in her turn aligned now above Gallerani. St Francis is also shown above on the left, receiving the stigmata with arms thrown heavenwards towards the seraph on the cross. Dunlop points out that the ‘artist was instructed to create visual and iconographic linkages between the local blessed and much more prominent and established saints as a way of fortifying the persona of the holy man’.¹⁰¹ Gallerani’s figure is the most restrained, figuring humility in his gentle offerings to the poor and his quietude in prayer. His arms are gathered in, while Dominic reaches forward and Francis extends himself upwards. We will have occasion to look in greater depth at the dynamics of reaching, prayer, and supplication in Chapter 4. For now, it will suffice to note that Gallerani is established in a quieter gestural tone, but in clear correspondence by means of bodily position with the greater examples of sanctity above him, his quiet prayer an accessible model for the viewer. It is in this ⁹⁸ The diptych is visible here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Guido_da_ siena_e_dietisalvi_di_speme%2C_dittico_del_beato_andrea_gallerani%2C_1270_ca%2C_01.JPG. ⁹⁹ Anne Dunlop, Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy (London: Routledge 2007). See also J.H. Stubblebine, Guido da Siena (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 69–70. ¹⁰⁰ Dunlop, Art and the Augustinian Order, p. 72. ¹⁰¹ See Dunlop, Art and the Augustinian Order, n. 63; Cordelia Warr, ‘Religious Habits and Visual Propaganda: The Vision of Blessed Reginald of Orleans’, Journal of Medieval History, 28 (2002): 43–72 (p. 53).

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mode that we will examine the gestural presentation of penitenti and beati in Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso, as local, personal models of accessible sanctity in correspondence with iconic saints or with the pervasive iconographies of the Virgin and of Christ. In their imitable character, Dante’s beati push the reader towards thinking and acting through their own relationships with saintly models. This chapter has sought to lay out the methodologies I am proposing for reading gesture in the Commedia, methodologies that must rely on work between text and image, and that conceive of Dante’s text as image-producing. Seeing or reading gestures means becoming aware of a network of locally produced meanings as available through interaction. The next chapters will offer some initial forays into the semantic spaces that become available when we see the gestural encounters of the poem as if they were frescoes, sculpture, or mosaics in a sacred space within which we can move, making connections, pausing, and noting parallelisms as we pass through and dwell within the architecture of the poem.

3 Fixity and Flexibility This chapter seeks to examine the gestural choreography that surrounds appeal and the response to appeal in cantos 5 and 6 of Purgatorio. In these cantos, Dante draws our attention to the issue of the efficacy of prayer for the souls in Ante-purgatory and does so with a series of kinesic descriptions that push at the boundaries of compassion, challenging readers to examine their own conditions of engagement and response.¹ The cantos present themselves, as we see throughout Ante-purgatory, in the form of a juncture between modes of construing human self-sufficiency and dependency, between classical precedent and Christian models. The cantos are thick with reference to Virgil’s Aeneid; they also bristle with embodied language that provides immediate and intuitive prompts for the simulation of physical and spiritual states.² Readers may visualize scenes in these cantos through revisionary intertexuality, through a memory bank of images of Aeneas’s encounters in the Underworld. Readers may also be textually prompted to experience various body states that, in conjunction with the hermeneutics of the intertextual, prompt modes of comportment (behavioural, philosophical, political, ethical, spiritual) that revise classical postures. Such readjustment does not come without a certain awkwardness, an awkwardness that demands attention to these choreographies as a hinge between the memory bank of the Aeneid and Christian iconography. Purgatorio 5 begins by foregrounding bodily movements, bringing postures, gestures, tempos, and contrasting senses of pace into stark contrast, posing an embodied ethical question: how do we respond to the demands of others?³ The opening stages a soul ‘drizzando il dito’ (‘a finger pointing long’,

¹ On the requests for prayer in Purgatorio, see Erminia Ardissino, ‘“Pregar pur ch’altri prieghi” (Purg. VI 26): Richieste di suffraggio nel Purgatorio’ in Preghiera e Liturgia nella Commedia: Atti Del Convegno Internazionale Di Studi, Ravenna, 12 Novembre 2011, ed. Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei Frati Minori Conventuali, 2013), pp. 45–66. ² Ardissino notes that the rhetoric of movement is particularly frequent in Purgatorio, in ‘Pregar pur ch’altri prieghi’, p. 64. ³ Burrow observes that souls in Purgatory ‘have a wider gestural range’ than souls in the other two realms. See Gestures and Looks, p. 172.

Dante, Artist of Gesture. Heather Webb, Oxford University Press. © Heather Webb (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.003.0004

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3) in Dante’s direction. Dante then turns his eyes at the sound of an equivalent verbal indication: Ve’ che non par che luca lo raggio da sinistra a quel di sotto, e come vivo par ch’e’ si conduca! (Purg. 5, 4–6)⁴

But Virgil scolds his charge: ‘“Perché l’animo tuo tanto s’impiglia”/ disse ’l maestro “che l’andare allenti?”’ (Purg. 5, 10–11).⁵ Dante’s backward gaze here (‘di retro a me’) shows that his soul is ‘caught up’ (the verb is ‘impigliarsi’) and slowed in its forward progress. ‘Vien dietro a me e lascia dir le genti,’ Virgil admonishes Dante: sta come torre ferma, che non crolla già mai la cima per soffiar di venti; che sempre l’omo in cui pensier rampolla sovra pensier, da sé dilunga il segno perché la foga l’un dell’altro insolla. (Purg. 5, 13–18)⁶

The images Virgil presents are highly visual and kinesic, displacing embodied ethical attributes onto non-human objects. He contrasts the solidity of a tower in the wind with an organic image that might suggest a tree sprouting new shoots one after another and thus dispersively growing in a way that contrasts the straight directedness of a single trunk. In terms of the gestural dynamism of this passage, we are drawn to hold the notion of the solidity of the tower against the generative impetus of ‘rampollare’ and ‘la foga’. Too much enthusiasm, Virgil warns, leads to a dangerous softening, ‘insollare’. Virgil’s anti-dynamic reasoning has firm classical foundations. While scholars have disputed whether the tower image might best be traced to various passages of the Aeneid, we can safely say that the imagery of solidity as posed against swift enthusiasms is well-established across classical sources, and this ethics of solidity can also easily be found in Dante’s own work.⁷ It is, perhaps, most visible in the gesturality of the souls in Limbo, but reaches, Anna ⁴ ‘See that? […] The one behind! / No sun ray shines, it seems, towards his left! And doesn’t he behave as though alive?’ ⁵ ‘“Why let your thoughts get tangled up like that?” / (My master speaks.) “It only slows your stride.” ’ ⁶ ‘Keep close behind me. Let them say their say. / Stand straight, a mighty tower unwavering, / its height unshaken by such breaths of wind. / When thought is bred too rampantly from thought, / then, of himself, a man will miss his mark.’ ⁷ See, for instance, Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, who cites Aen. VII, 586 and X, 693ff., p. 140, n. 14.

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Maria Chiavacci Leonardi suggests, all the way into Paradiso, in Canto 17, when Dante claims to be ‘ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura’ (‘four-square against the blows that were to come’, 24).⁸ I will suggest, however, that this pose is not a constant throughout Dante’s journey, during which he will be called to respond to the specificities of each encounter. Ante-purgatory stages a moment when the classical rules of comportment must bend, and emphasis shifts from the character of the single individual to the dynamics of response to the multiple appeals of multiple encounters. While it may be a good thing to be ‘ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura’, the movement through Ante-purgatory will instead be an exercise in flexibility and fluidity in response to the just appeals of the penitent shades, beginning with an affective tuning of the ear to the sound of shared suffering. Early commentators refer to Aristotelian notions of the ‘magnanimo’ to gloss Dante’s vision of the great-souled ancients in Limbo.⁹ As Sonia Gentili shows, distinct resonances may be seen with the gestural and postural portrait of the magnanimo in Taddeo Alderotti’s Etica in vulgari translata a magistro Taddeo. In the eighth chapter, ‘Che cose aiutano l’uomo essere magnianimo’ (those things that help a man be magnanimous), Taddeo writes: ‘E è nel suo movimento tardo e grave, e nella parola è fermo e nel favellare. E questa è la diffinitione del magnanimo.’¹⁰ Elsewhere, the formulation is ‘E l’uomo magnianimo sì è il maggiore uomo e il più honorato che ssia, e non si muove per piccola cosa. E non è inchina la magnianimità sua a niuna soçça cosa.’¹¹ This unbending stance is to be found in Brunetto Latini’s Tresor as well: ‘Et a la verité [dire] celui qui est magnanime est le plus grant home et plus honorable qui soit, et il ne sera ja esmeus par petites choses ne non obeist son cuer a chose laide.’¹² Of course, such inflexibility depends on the judgement of the things around the magnanimo as a ‘piccola cosa’ or ‘sozza’ or ‘laide’.

⁸ Chiavacci Leonardi, p. 140, n. 14. ⁹ See Sonia Gentili, ‘La magnanimità nell’Italia medoevale: Commento ai capitoli IV, 8–11 dell’Etica in volgare di Taddeo Alderotti’, Revista de poética medieval, 32 (2018): 173–200 (p.195); Fiorenzo Forti, ‘Il limbo e i megalopsicoi della Nicomachea’ in Magnanimitade: Studi su un tema dantesco (Rome: Carocci, 2006), pp. 9–48 (previously published by Pàtron, 1977). ¹⁰ ‘He is, in his movements, slow and serious, and he is steady in his words and his speech. And this is the definition of the magnanimous one.’ Etica traslata IV 8, in Gentili, ‘La magnanimità’, p. 186. ¹¹ ‘The magnanimous man is the greatest and most honourable man that there is, and he is not moved by small things. His magnanimity does not bend to any low thing.’ IV, 7 in Gentili, ‘La magnanimità’, p. 195. ¹² ‘It is true to say that he who is magnanimous is the greatest man and the more honourable man that you may find, and he will never be moved by small things and he will not lower his heart to ugly things.’ Tresor II 23, 3. See Gentili, ‘La magnanimità’, p. 189.

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Such depiction of the magnanimo is very close to the wording in Inferno 4, where the residents of the castle of Limbo are described as follows: Genti v’eran con occhi tardi e gravi, di grande autorità ne’ lor sembianti: parlavan rado con voci soavi. (112–14)¹³

Iacopo della Lana’s commentary, as Gentili notes, seems to provide a paraphrase enriched with glossing via the translated Aristotelian source: con occhi tardi e gravi, quasi a dire chi vuole essere estimato savio, dee muovere li ocelli adagio, e non guardare più su che sua statura, nè avere velocità in suo moto, perchè la mobilità delli occhi palesa instabilità d’animo.¹⁴

If Virgil’s severity seems excessive when he chastises Dante’s eye movements at the opening of the canto, we might turn to this commentary for a gloss.¹⁵ The velocity of eye movements, as understood here, suggests an instability of the soul. Gentili points to the Aristotelian source for Lana as the Grosseteste version of the Nicomachean Ethics: Set et motus gravis lentus magnanimi videtur esse, et vox gravis, et locutio stabilis. Non enim festinus qui circa pauca studet, neque contenciosus, qui nichil magnum existimat; acumen autem vocis et velocitas per hec.¹⁶

But a parallel with more ambiguous ethical connotations might be drawn with Farinata: Ma quell’altro magnanimo, a cui posta restato m’era, non mutò aspetto, né mosse collo, né piegò sua costa. (Inf. 10, 73–5)¹⁷ ¹³ ‘Here there were some whose eyes were firm and grave— / all, in demeanour, of authority— / who seldom spoke; their tones were soft and gentle.’ Inglese has ‘boci’, but here I revert to Petrocchi. ¹⁴ ‘With eyes that are grave and slow, so to speak, he who wishes to be considered wise, must move his eyes slowly and not raise his eyes above his own height, and never move them quickly, because mobility of the eyes betrays instability of the soul.’ Iacopo della Lana, comment on Inf. 4, 112–14. ¹⁵ See, for example, Daniele Mattalìa, who describes Virgil’s reaction as ‘eccessivo e sproporzionato in rapporto al fatto’. Cited from the commentary to Purg. 5, 14 in La Divina Commedia, ed. Daniele Mattalìia (Milan: Rizzoli, 1960), available on Dante Lab at: http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu. ¹⁶ ‘But also the movement of the magnanimous man appears to be dignified and slow, and his voice serious, and his speech steady. For the man who takes few things seriously is not hasty, nor is the man who considers nothing great an argumentative person; but concern for such things causes a sharpness of voice and a hurried manner.’ Quoted in Gentili, ‘La magnanimità’, p. 195. ¹⁷ ‘The other noble soul (at whose command / I’d come to rest) in no way changed expression. / He neither moved his neck nor bent his waist.’

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As scholars have noted, the term ‘magnanimo’ (‘noble’) is not unequivocally positive.¹⁸ While the behaviour of those in Limbo is appropriate to them and to their context of pagan virtue, Farinata’s unbending and unyielding posture in the face of his neighbour’s suffering will be visually countered, again and again, with models of inclination towards others in Purgatorio and Paradiso.¹⁹ We have already seen one counterexample of shared humility on the terrace of pride. The encounter with the souls of Purgatorio 5 is one of these sites, so characteristic of Ante-purgatory, where two gestural and postural practices that correspond to divergent ethical attitudes will come into contrast. Virgil’s exhortation to be firm like a tower and not dispersive in one’s energies like a sprouting tree resides in the classical notion of the immutability of the magnanimo. But is this the most fitting gestural ethics for this Ante-purgatory, for this place at the borders, this in-between zone of virtues, between the classical and the Christian, where Cato acts as guardian, but angels swoop in with the swift reminder that grace is present here? Certainly, Virgil’s language of the ‘torre ferma’ (‘mighty tower’) is immediately countered by a litany of images of velocity. First it is the souls who ‘corsero incontr’a noi’ (‘hurried to meet us’, 29), to beg information after the group spies Dante’s shadow. It is Virgil who explains to them: Voi potete andarne e ritrarre a color che vi mandaro che ’l corpo di costui è vera carne. (Purg. 5, 31–3)²⁰

In response to this affirmation of the truth of the fleshliness of Dante’s body, the petitioning souls are described as moving with the swiftness of precisely those evanescent meteorological phenomena against which towers are meant to stand firm: Vapori accesi non vid’i’ sì tosto di prima notte mai fender sereno né, sol calando, nuvole, d’agosto, che color non tornasser suso in meno; ¹⁸ See John A. Scott, ‘Inferno X: Farinata “magnanimo”’ in Dante magnanimo: Studi sulla Commedia, ed. Emilio Peruzzi, Ezio Raimondi, and John A. Scott (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1977), pp. 9–45. ¹⁹ See David Ruzicka on perceptions of the hardening of the body as correlated to stubborn resistance of the spirit in Isaiah 48:4 as a mode of reading Farinata: ‘“Uno lume apparente di fuori secondo sta dentro”: The Expressive Body in Dante’s Commedia’, The Italianist, 24 (2014): 1–22 (p. 6). ²⁰ ‘You may now return / and bear to those who sent you this reply: / “This man, in body, is true flesh and bone.” ’

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This intricate set of descriptions likening the movement of the souls to lightning or to shooting stars gives an intense sensation of urgency and simultaneity: the impulse to transmit the message of Dante’s corporeal presence to those waiting and the movement of the group towards Dante. In this emphasis on Dante’s physical body in the afterlife and the rush of movement to meet it, we might find a gestural intimation of the resurrectional poetics that pervades the Purgatorio. In Paradiso 24, Dante apostrophizes Peter’s faith by the gestural marker of his swiftness towards Christ’s sepulchre: O santo padre, spirito che vedi ciò che credesti sì che tu vincesti ver’ lo sepulcro più giovani piedi. (Par. 24, 124–6)²²

The force of Peter’s belief is depicted in his dynamism, in his overcoming of physical limitations in a rush towards the tomb.²³ Dante in fact depicts Peter as impetuous in the Monarchia, defining him by his impulsive gestures. In a reference to John, Dante notes that when the other disciples hesitated at the entrance to the tomb, it was Peter who went in immediately.²⁴ Such haste, in classical Roman terms, would be entirely unseemly. The running slave was a stock type in Roman comedy; a free man would not run.²⁵ I am proposing that the complex choreography of this canto offers the possibility of a gestural ethics at odds with the one Virgil presents. This is the realm of the negligent, and therefore admonishing Dante to keep moving towards his goal has a certain usefulness, as scholars have noted.²⁶ And yet this necessary movement will need to be reconciled with a new dynamics of openness to the requests of others. So while Virgil at first admonishes Dante for a glance ‘gli occhi rivolsi al suon’ (‘I turned my eyes’, Purg. 5, 7), he will soon need to allow ²¹ ‘Vapours, when kindled in night’s earthly hours, / flash across tranquil skies like meteors, / and August clouds are cleft by setting suns. / Yet none I’ve ever seen went up as quick / as these two messengers, who turned, once there, / with all the rest, to us—a herd in rampage.’ ²² ‘Most Holy Father, Spirit who now sees / what once you so believed that you outdid / the younger feet that ran towards the grave.’ ²³ John 20:4, 20:3–8. See Monarchia III, ix, 16. ²⁴ Monarchia III, ix, 9–18. See John 20:4–6. ²⁵ See Graf, ‘Gestures and Conventions’, p. 49. ²⁶ See, for example, Giorgio Inglese, p. 79, n. 14.

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compromise, in which Dante continues to move forward even while he listens to those who address him: ‘pur va e in andando ascolta’ (‘So listen as you go, but still press on’, 45). Thus begins a set of scenes of awkward affect that strain Dante’s susceptibility to the just appeals of those around him against the constraints of Virgilian-dictated forward movement. The compromise Virgil suggested ‘Questa gente che preme a noi è molta, e vegnonti a pregar’ disse ’l poeta; ‘però pur va e in andando ascolta’, (43–5)²⁷

is not an easy one, as the throng presses upon Dante and Virgil even as they move forward. The crowd is insistent: ‘un poco il passo queta’ (‘Slow down a bit!’, 48); they beg: ‘guarda s’alcun di noi unqua vedesti’ (‘Look! Is there anyone you’ve seen before?’, 49). Then, more urgently, ‘Deh, perché vai? deh, perché non t’arresti?’ (‘A h! Where to now? Ah! Why don’t you stand still?’, 51).

Sonorous gesture and interruption Purgatorio 5 is a canto filled with these gestural sounds of appeal, including both ‘oh’ and ‘deh’.²⁸ These interjections are particularly gestural because they interrupt semantic speech with direct affective appeals. The ‘oh’ is staged at the opening of the canto as the interruption of the singing of the ‘Miserere’: ‘mutar lor canto in un “oh” lungo e roco’ (‘they changed their chanting to a long, hoarse “Oooh!”’ 27) as they see that Dante’s body casts a shadow. In other words, it is a sound of pure reaction, conveying no meaning apart from the reception of something external to the perceiver whose speech has been interrupted and now, rather than producing speech, registers only reaction. The ‘oh’, like the ‘deh’, is repeated again and again in Canto 5 as the sort of sonorous gesture that, in Judith Butler’s words, ‘allegorizes the decomposition of the speech act understood as the embodied expression of a definite will’.²⁹ ²⁷ ‘“They’ll come in multitudes,” the poet said, / “and mill around and pester you for prayers. / So listen as you go, but still press on.” ’ ²⁸ On the use of the interjection ‘deh’ in the Vita nova and in Cavalcanti, see Valentina Mele, forthcoming. ²⁹ Judith Butler, ‘When Gesture Becomes Event’ in Inter Views in Performance Philosophy: Crossings and Conversations, ed. Anna Street, Julien Alliot, and Magnolia Pauker (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp.171–91 (p. 184).

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The ‘oh’ and ‘deh’ are moments of broken-down speech, gestures that show how each individual here is radically subjected to others. This is in direct contrast with the rigid, unchanging characters we encountered in Hell. When Farinata is interrupted by Cavalcante and his questions about the fate of his son, Farinata holds, impervious, and then continues as if nothing had happened, ‘continuando al primo detto’ (‘still continuing in what he’d said’, 76). By contrast, the susceptibility of these souls in Ante-purgatory is rendered highly visible, as their speech and movement are interrupted and redirected by their perceptions of Dante’s presence and reception or lack of reception of their pleas. Their speech is not self-sufficient, and audibly reveals its dependence on Dante’s audience and response. It is helpful, in this regard, to look a bit more closely at the expression ‘deh’, which is no longer commonly used, in order to unearth its gestural properties. In the Enciclopedia dantesca, Fernando Salsano offers this definition: ‘interiezione, che esprime uno stato di commozione per cui si cerca nell’interlocutore consenso o rimedio’.³⁰ It is an interjection with enormously dense affective properties. Not only does it express a state of strong emotion, but it asks the listener to offer consent, remedy, or commiseration. It is not merely expression, but is expression that explicitly makes affective demands on the listener. It will not be enough merely to hear the speaker who voices the ‘deh’; the interlocutor who hears the ‘deh’ is invited into a specific affective bond. If there is the echo of another poetic voice in the ‘deh’, could well be Cavalcanti’s: Deh spiriti miei, quando mi vedete con tanta pena, come non mandate fuor dalla mente parole adornate di pianto, dolorose e sbigottite? (Rime VI, 1–4)³¹

Cavalcanti uses the ‘deh’ extensively in his poetry, but in a way that is in the end ultimately entirely different from the Dante-focused definition I have supplied above. Cavalcanti turns the ‘deh’ unexpectedly inward, begging his own spiriti to send forth painful words from his mind. In other poems, the ³⁰ ‘Interjection that expresses a state of emotion for which one seeks consent or remedy in the interlocutor’ (my translation). Fernando Salsano, ‘Deh’ in Enciclopedia dantesca, ed. Umberto Bosco, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–8), vol. 2, p.339b. ³¹ ‘A h, my spirits, when you see me / in such pain, why do you not send / forth from the mind words adorned / with tears, painful and despairing?’ Guido Cavalcanti, Rime, ed. Roberto Rea and Giorgio Inglese (Rome: Carocci, 2016), pp. 64–5 (my translation).

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‘deh’ is addressed to the poem itself (‘Deh, ballatetta’). The reader of the poem is placed in the position of someone who spies on the most intimate of conversations, someone who is not in a position to help. Dante’s ‘deh’, conversely, is a gestural grabbing at the listener, both within the diegesis and beyond the frame of the text, reaching to the reader. We can trace such usage from the Vita nova: Deh peregrini che pensosi andate, forse di cosa che non v’è presente, venite voi da sı´ lontana gente, com’a la vista voi ne dimostrate, che non piangete quando voi passate per lo suo mezzo la città dolente, come quelle persone che neente par che ’ntendesser la sua gravitate? (Vn 40.9, 1–8)³²

The ‘deh’ here is addressed to a specific group of interlocutors, the pilgrims, even as it extends its reach to the reader of the text, expressing a state of mourning and asking compassion, in the sense of co-suffering, from the pilgrims and reader: ‘che non piangete?’ The demand for affective involvement is cast in two ways: first, as a kind of emotional mirroring, or weeping in the physical proximity of pain; second, as an act of hermeneutics. Those who understand (‘intendere’) the heft of loss will weep with the poet and his city.

Dante’s affective communities It is here, in the Vita nova, that Dante begins to define a community of readers. Barbara Rosenwein’s important term, ‘emotional community’ is the place to begin as we consider how Dante sets out the parameters of his readership from the Vita nova into the Commedia.³3 Rather than focusing on emotion words, however, as Rosenwein does when she studies shared emotional vocabularies ³² ‘Oh, pilgrims walking by oblivious, / your minds, it seems, on something not at hand, / can you have come from such a distant land— / the way you look suggests as much to us— / that you’re not weeping, even as you pass / right through the suffering city, like that band / of people who, it seems, don’t understand / a thing about the measure of its loss?’ Dante Alighieri, Vita nuova, ed. Donato Pirovano (Rome: Salerno, 2015), p. 281. ³ Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). See also Medieval Affect, Feeling and Emotion, eds. Glenn Burger and Holly Crocker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

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in specific communities, I will focus on affective transfer modelled in Dante’s text. Such transfer is often staged in gestural modes. What moves between people in Dante’s works can sometimes be characterized as what today we might call an emotion, but more often eludes the boundaries of those modern terms. My interest here is in probing those modes of feeling that are textually established as transferable between characters and between text and reader in Dante’s work. To put it another way, I do not seek to make gesture or bodily expression stand for a certain emotion as possessed in the individual.³⁴ I intend, rather, to focus on the betweenness of gesture as mediating between subjects. Dante’s usage of described gesture, as we have seen in the examples produced thus far, does not lend itself to swift de-codification but rather shows forth the complexity of human interaction and the possibilities or impossibilities of aligning desires. ‘Affetto’, as I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 5, indicates in Dante’s usage a desiring tendency towards someone or something; it is a movement of the spiriti and the soul towards someone or something, a movement characterized by a particular charge. ‘Affetto’ in Dante, like today’s use of ‘affect’, intentionally places its emphasis on the relationship with that to which the subject is drawn. That relationship is often constructed as a response to an influence already received.³⁵ It does not occur in a void and cannot exist alone. Recent work in affect studies likewise insists on a movement away from emotions construed as the property of the emoting individual (a decidedly modern and Cartesian approach) and as potentially discrete objects of study. Instead, affects are understood to be vectors between people.³⁶ Affects involve the whole person, wrapping people in a net of relations with those around them. Such understanding of the whole person as caught up in a web of relations cannot make distinctions between mind and body. The discourses of affect studies often seek to resist the dualisms that continue to pervade our terminology.³⁷ I suggest that gestures, working as they always do between people, ³⁴ This goes against the notion that gesture and facial expression can be universally read as signifying specific emotions. See, for example, Marc D. Pell et al., ‘Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language’, Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 33.2 (2009): 107–20. See also Rosenwein, Emotional Communities and Gertsman, ‘Facial Gesture’ for a critique of this position. ³⁵ See Katherine Ibbett, ‘“When I do, I call it affect”’, Paragraph, 40.2 (2017): 244–53 (p. 245): ‘Affect [is] relational, but not a binary of action and passivity, since, as Brian Massumi puts it, in this case ‘to be affected’ is also a capacity.’ ³⁶ Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’ in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (London: Duke University Press, 2010), pp.1–25 (p. 1). ³⁷ For a critique of opposition of bodily affect with emotion and cognition, as well as a proposed approach to affects in theory and literature that is neither cognitivist nor noncognitivist, see Alex Houen, Introduction to Affect and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 1–30. See also Gregg and Seigworth, ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’.

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cast that web of affect into visibility. Gestures are traces of being affected by others and affecting others. It is particularly important for the study of Dante’s texts to think through affective communities in order to continuously remind ourselves that texts like the Vita nova and the Commedia elaborate a sense of embodiment as an open system of interactions with the surrounding environment and our surrounding communities, of spiriti that circulate between eyes, mouths, hearts, and minds, passing from one person to another. While perhaps only now the pandemic has forced us to become, again, highly aware of proxemics, compelled to consider the ways in which breath can move from one set of lungs into another set of lungs, Dante and his communities were immensely attentive to the trembling vibrancy of encounter between bodies at a distance, in the exchange of glances, words, and gestures. I suggest that Dante’s texts, from the Vita nova onward, carefully employ techniques to stimulate affective responses in the reader, in order to involve the reader as vulnerable.³⁸ The Vita nova, first and foremost, seeks to involve the reader in shared pain, seeking out an audience of the vulnerable. The ‘nuova materia’ (‘new material’, Vn 30.1) that Dante refers to insistently in the Vita nova, as a new poetics, is precisely concentrated on the transmissibility of pain.³⁹ Reading the Vita nova means coming to appreciate the immensity of Beatrice’s absence, and, ultimately, forming a community of mourning with other readers of that text. The Vita nova, in fact, continues to insist on the process of selecting a readership. It becomes increasingly clear that the discriminating factor for that readership is the capacity to feel pain in a shared way. It is in fact in the comparison between the appeals for compassion that both Cavalcanti and Dante stage in their poetry that we may better appreciate Dante’s particular drive to form a community. Cavalcanti’s poetic language percolates throughout the Vita nova, but Dante’s redeployment of that language shifts the emphasis from the singular to the collective. Many of Cavalcanti’s poems are spectacular ostentations of the poet’s unique vulnerability. To take just one example of the many mechanisms employed in Cavalcanti’s

³⁸ Lina Bolzoni speaks of an ‘ethics of reading’ in the Commedia, in which, as when Dante describes himself as reacting to the emotive force of his memory of the dark wood, he ‘shows readers how to react to the poem, and the kinds of transformations each canto can produce in them. In other words, it offers a model to imitate: we readers too must allow the images to unfold their power onto us.’ See Lina Bolzoni, ‘Memory’ in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, ed. Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 17–33 (p. 28). ³⁹ In Vn 30.1, Dante speaks, in the wake of Beatrice’s death, of the ‘entrata della nuova materia’ (‘preamble to the new material’).

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poetry to insist on the singularity of the poet’s experience, we could look at the witness figures staged in the ballata ‘Vedete ch’i’ son un che vo piangendo’, who, designated as ‘persone accorte’, say amongst themselves: Quest’ha dolore e già, secondo che ne par de fòre, dovrebbe dentro aver novi martiri. (Rime X, 10–12)⁴⁰

The external signs visible in Cavalcanti’s body and movements give evidence of ‘new’ or unique and unprecedented sufferings that can only be witnessed in a limited way, and cannot be experienced by the observer. Dante chooses to take a different tack in his libello, redesignating the space of the novo. Vulnerability will become, in Dante’s work, not the sole purview of the singular suffering poet, but rather the common foundation of an entire community of sufferers, composed of the readers of Dante’s book.⁴¹ These readers, in Dante’s ‘new’ poetics, are not merely called upon to be witnesses to Dante’s suffering, but above all, to recognize what Beatrice was and is, and, in so doing, to suffer along with the poet at her loss. It is true that Dante’s personal suffering was the subject of the first part of the Vita nova, often referred to as the ‘in vita’ section, and that emphasis on his personal suffering returns as well in the intentionally problematized episode of the ‘donna pietosa’. But in the wake of Beatrice’s death, we see the poet shifting the focus of our attention and broadening the horizons of suffering. Fundamentally, what the second part of the Vita nova investigates is the possibility of truly sharing mourning via the mechanism of the poetic text and thus to create a community founded on that shared suffering. It is through a sequence of physical and verbal gestures that suffering can be shared. The ‘deh’ in the Vita nova is one key verbal gesture that seeks to arrest the potential witness and render them a participant and not merely an observer. It would seem that, in the Commedia, the ‘deh’ has its natural place in Purgatorio 5, and more broadly, in Purgatorio as a whole. As against three instances of ‘deh’ in Inferno (all voiced by Dante and by no other character), and two possible uses in Paradiso (but one of these is dubious), there are four usages of ‘deh’ in Purgatorio 5 and four more across the rest of the Purgatorio. It is ⁴⁰ ‘This one is in pain / and certainly, from what one can see externally / must, within, have unprecedented sufferings.’ (my literal translation) ⁴¹ Stefano Carrai notes that a key elegiac trait of the text is ‘l’invito a partecipare al dolore del poeta’ (‘the invitation to participate in the poet’s pain’). See Dante elegiaco, p. 27.

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only Dante who uses the ‘deh’ in Hell; it is a distinctly human gesture to invoke the affective bond of shared emotion. The same is true in Paradiso, where it is Dante who voices the interjection: ‘Deh, chi siete?’ fue la voce mia, di grande affetto impressa. (Par. 8, 44–5)⁴²

Dante also voices the interjection in Paradiso 9: ‘Deh, metti al mio voler tosto compenso beato spirto,’—dissi—‘e fammi prova che possa in te refletter quel ch’i’ penso!’ (Par. 9, 19–21)⁴³

In both cases, Dante’s ‘deh’ is the characteristically human note in an exchange of shared affection and joy in the presence of the other. The blessed souls have no need to ask for expressions of such shared affect as, in their heavenly state, sharing is a constant condition of their being. But Ante-purgatory, where the condition of the souls is most like the earthly conditions of human life, is full of these demands. Bonconte di Montefeltro begins his appeal to Dante with: Deh, se quel disio si compia che ti tragge all’alto monte, con buona pïetate aiuta il mio! (Purg. 5, 85–7)⁴⁴

Here, the gestural reaching out to the listener implicit in the ‘deh’ itself is expanded throughout the terzina, aligning Dante’s disio with Bonconte’s own, drawing them both in the same direction. In a similar way, Iacopo del Cassero, who spoke previously, aligned his prayers and Dante’s in his appeal: ti priego, se mai vedi quel paese che siede tra Romagna e quel di Carlo, che tu mi sia di tuoi prieghi cortese. (Purg. 5, 68–70)⁴⁵ ⁴² ‘My voice impressed with with longing warmth: “Who are you?”’ ⁴³ ‘So, longingly, I said: “You happy soul! / Quickly, in answer balance what I will. / Prove that in you I can reflect my thought.” ’ ⁴⁴ ‘May your desires be met […] that draw you to the mountain height. Then, please, / take pity. In your goodness, aid my own.’ ⁴⁵ ‘May I […] entreat you, if you’ve seen those lands that lie / between Romagna and the realm of Charles, / that you, in all your kindness, pray for me.’

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The concatenation of ‘deh’s, and of reciprocal and interrelated prayers, demands that Dante align his desires and his prayers with these souls, in this ever more tightly woven chain of affective co-suffering and co-penitence. The final ‘deh’ in the sequence of Purgatorio 5 comes at the very end of the canto, in the brief, dense, and potent words of Pia. Here too, the reciprocal implications of the gestural opening, ‘deh’, are elaborated in the lines that follow. Pia spends the first two of her six lines of speech visualizing Dante’s return to the world and his repose: ‘Deh! quando tu sarai tornato al mondo / e riposato della lunga via’ (130-1),⁴⁶ modelling thought for and of her interlocutor. Placing herself in his future affective space, she asks that Dante remember her upon his return. She provides the sparest of details to anchor her identity, leaving the appeal itself as the gestural marker of her personhood. The ‘deh’ constructs her thought accompanying Dante on his journey homeward, and his reciprocal thought for her on his return. As in the first instances of ‘deh’ in the canto, the interjection associates itself with the attempt to alter patterns of dynamism in some way: ‘Deh, perché vai? deh, perché non t’arresti’ (51); ‘deh, se quel disio / si compia che ti tragge a l’alto monte’ (84-85); ‘deh! quando tu sarai tornato’ (130).⁴⁷

Testing compassion: Gambling and lists Purgatorio 6 takes a wide-angle opening in order to visually elaborate the choreography of the encounters we witnessed in close-up frames in Canto 5, with this broader view shifting our focus from emphasis on the request to the responsibility of the one who can offer help or consolation:

Quando si parte il gioco dela zara, colui che perde si riman dolente, repetendo le volte, e tristo impara.

⁴⁶ ‘When you return, pray Heaven, to the world, / and, having rested from long travelling’ ⁴⁷ ‘A h! Why don’t you stand still?’; ‘May your desires be met […] that draw you to the mountain height’; ‘When you return, pray Heaven, to the world’ Enrico Malato notes the relevance of the repetition of the same interjection for the entire canto, placing his emphasis on the change in tone in the encounter with Pia. ‘“[…] per una lagrimetta che ’l me toglie”: lettura del canto V del Purgatorio’ in Lectura dantis bononiensis, Vol. VI, ed. Emilio Pasquini and Carlo Galli (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2017), pp. 3–35.

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Coll’altro se ne va tutta la gente: qual va dinanzi, e qual di dietro il prende, e qual da lato li si reca a mente; el non s’arresta, e questo e quello intende: a cui porge la man più non fa pressa; e così dala calca si difende. Tal ero io in quella turba spessa, volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia: e promettendo mi sciogliea da essa. (Purg. 6, 1–12)⁴⁸

Dynamism is associated with the winner here, as the loser stays still, studying his losses. But as the winner, like Dante, moves through the crowd, his vector of movement is affected by the responding motions of the crowd around him. The organic attractive impulses of the crowd call to mind the kinetic situation of the ‘pensier rampolla/ sovra pensier’ (‘thought is bred too rampantly from thought’, 16–17) Virgil warned of in Purgatorio 5. How is Dante now to face such distraction, without allowing his soul to be caught up? That verb, ‘impigliarsi’ (‘tangled up’, Purg. 5, 10) has been used again in the interim since Virgil’s warning, to describe the circumstances of Iacopo’s death: Corsi al palude, e le cannucce e ’l braco m’impigliar sì ch’i’ caddi; e lì vid’io dele mie veni farsi in terra laco. (Purg. 5, 82–4)⁴⁹

Must attention to the claims of these souls be considered in the terms of Iacopo’s limbs mired down in the swamp? Certainly Dante does not hesitate, now, not only to turn his eyes towards those who appeal for his help as he did previously when Virgil scolded him, but he moves through the group, turning towards each, ‘volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia: / e promettendo mi sciogliea da essa’ (‘turning my face to this side, then to that. / By promising each one, I got away’, Purg. 6, 11–12). ⁴⁸ ‘When punters split off from some gambling game, / the loser stays behind, all misery, / to check the throws once more and, sadly learn, / while, with the winner, all the rest go off. / Some buttonhole the man, some pluck his tails, / and some his sleeve—“Just think of me,” they mean. / Though hearing each of them, he does not pause, / his hands fend all away, to make them stop. / So he defends himself from this great press. / Well, that was me, in that dense crowd of souls, / turning by face to this side, then to that. / By promising each one, I got away.’ ⁴⁹ ‘Towards the marsh I ran, where—brackish reeds / entwining me—I fell, watching as, in this mire, / a lake spread outwards, forming from my veins.’

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Critics have labelled the tone of this opening of Purgatorio 6 ‘comicorealistico’, judging that it sets up a marked contrast with the tone of the end of Purgatorio 5, which is considered ‘elegiaco’.⁵⁰ The game Dante refers to was forbidden by religious and civil authorities. But perhaps the reference to the game itself and the nature of the game is less at issue here than the gestural dynamics the image establishes. The ludic referent for the choreography sets the reader up with certain unsympathetic expectations, in order to surprise us with an unexpected ethical and spiritual re-evaluation that comes forth from a new perspective on the orchestrated movement of bodies. As elsewhere in the Purgatorio, such as the terrace of pride, for instance, the close-up encounters and lengthy dialogues with individual souls in Purgatorio 5 are followed by a list of names in Purgatorio 6. The same sort of arrangement occurs for Purgatorio 11 and 12, where in Canto 11, lengthy dialogues with Omberto and Oderisi are followed by a list of famously prideful people in the acrostic of Canto 12.⁵¹ For modern readers, the list format creates an obstacle to our ability to fully engage or to feel compassion as we may when a dialogue is reported. As Giorgio Inglese puts it, ‘Anche la successiva rassegna di morti violente risulta in certo modo sdrammatizzata, risolta epigraficamente’, referring also to Simonelli’s similar judgement: ‘non si tratta di veri e propri personaggi’.⁵² But I would suggest that we have reason to think that Dante’s sense of the list can differ from modern critical assessments.⁵³ While, as Alberto Casadei points out, the list of ‘spiriti magni’ in Limbo takes on a stiff, rather textbooklike character, if we turn instead to Inferno 5, we can see Dante modelling the most intense affective reaction to a list:⁵⁴ ‘Vedi Parìs, Tristano….’ E più di mille ombre mostrommi, e nominòmi, a dito, ch’amor di nostra vita dipartille. ⁵⁰ G.C. Alessio, ‘Canti V–VI: Esilio, penitenza, resurrezione’ in Esperimenti danteschi, Purgatorio 2009, ed. Benedetta Quadrio (Genoa and Milan: Marietti, 2010), pp. 53–70 (p. 64). ⁵¹ For a discussion of modes of witnessing suffering in Purgatorio 12, see my Dante’s Persons, pp. 101–13. ⁵² ‘A lso the subsequent list of those who died a violent death turns out rather less horrifying than it could be, and is presented epigraphically’ and ‘these are not real actual characters’ (my translations). Giorgio Inglese, note on Purg. 6, 1. See Maria Picchio Simonelli, ‘Il giuoco della zara e i mali d’Italia: lettura del canto VI del Purgatorio’, Italianistica, 21 (1992): 331–41. ⁵³ For a sensitive treatment of lists and inventories in Dante as viewing contextualized by the public memory store, see Mary J. Carruthers, ‘The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages’, New Literary History, 24.4 (1993): 881–904 (pp. 882–5). ⁵⁴ See also Alberto Casadei, Dalla chiusura del ‘Convivio’ agli inizi del Poema sacro: una nuova ipotesi sui canti fiorentini (Ravenna: Longo, 2021), p. 155, on the list of those in Limbo, which he compares to the style of the Tesoretto vv. 2481–94.

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Poscia ch’io ebbi il mio dottore udito nomar le donne antiche e ’ cavalieri, pietà mi giunse e fu’ quasi smarrito. (Inf. 5, 67–72)⁵⁵

Pietà takes over Dante, as a result of the list of known names, to the point that he is almost lost (‘smarrito’), the strongest statement of being affected that the poem offers (Inf. 1). Pietade (‘Pity’, Inf. 5, 140) is likewise what binds Dante’s soul at the end of Francesca’s speech, causing him to lose himself in a death-like state. The parallel between the ‘pietà’ evoked by Virgil’s list of famous lustful sinners, and the ‘pietade’ evoked by close and extensive dialogue with one of these souls reveals that our modern dispassionate reaction to the lists of Purgatorio 6 and elsewhere is a sign of our own failings as readers, and not an indication of an authorial design to distance us from a certain set of historical figures. Dante-as-character’s pre-existing textual relationship with Paris and Tristan, for instance, is already dialogue enough to be moved at their plight without further encounter. Dante assumes the same of his reader when he lists ‘known’ names. If we already have an affective relationship to each of these individuals, through political, familial, or regional networks, or even through the memory of reading their stories, then mention of their name in this new context will be adequate to catch us up in compassionate relation with them.⁵⁶ Dialogues are necessary in the Purgatorio and elsewhere in the Commedia when it is crucial to revise what might be already known: that Iacopo and Bonconte repented fully at the moment of their deaths, for instance. But in the wake of our dialogue with them, the mere naming of the known figures who follow should prompt us to understand them in the same context. If they are here, in Ante-purgatory, they have repented, and their known stories gain new meaning. The technique of the list takes on yet another form in Purgatorio 7, when the princes of Europe are singled out by concise, deft descriptions of ‘li atti

⁵⁵ ‘“Paris you see, and Tristan there.” And more / than a thousand shadows he numbered, naming / them all, whom Love had led to leave our life. / Hearing that man of learning herald thus / these chevaliers of old, and noble ladies, / pity oppressed me and I was all but lost.’ ⁵⁶ Nicolò Mineo notes that the first five were well known in Tuscany and the last, even if French, would have been known as well. ‘Purgatorio VI: L’ “infermità’ italiana” in Lectura dantis bononiensis, Vol. VI, ed. Emilio Pasquini and Carlo Galli (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2017), pp. 69–93 (p. 77).

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e’ volti’ (‘faces […] and gestures’, Purg. 7, 88).⁵⁷ Following a wide-angle perspective from above, ‘di questo balzo’ (‘on this ledge’, 88), Sordello guides a cinematic series of close-ups of each of the princes, characterized in every case by gestures and facial features. They are paired up, and their attitudes work in conversation with their individual interlocutors as well as contributing to the general mood of the valley, in which the princes display melancholy at the comportments of their descendants. The ‘nasetto’ (‘button-nosed’), Filippo III, beats his chest, while his companion, with whom he is ‘stretto a consiglio’ (‘so caught / in conversation’), displays another highly legible gesture: ‘vedete ch’a fatto a la guancia / de la sua palma, sospirando, letto’ (Purg. 7, 107–8).⁵⁸ The description draws attention to itself, leading with Sordello’s ‘vedete’ and dropping ‘guancia’ at the end of the line, separating ‘palma’ and ‘letto’ with the sound of the sigh. It has been noted that the list here takes some characteristics from Sordello’s planh or lament at the death of Blacatz, in which the troubadour suggests that the surviving rulers should eat of the deceased nobleman’s heart in order to gain the strength they lack to take on their current battles.⁵⁹ But Dante’s list has a decidedly gestural quality that cannot be found in Sordello’s planh. Various commentators have seen the described gestures here as having a statuesque quality, as if Dante is describing groups of statues or three-dimensional portrayals of these historical characters fixed in their most expressive gestures.⁶⁰ Enrico I, with his cheek on his hand, echoes the pose of Drittura in Dante’s canzone ‘Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute’:

Dolesi l’una con parole molto, e ’n su la man si posa come succisa rosa: il nudo braccio, di dolor colonna, sente l’oraggio che cade dal volto; ⁵⁷ On the Valley of the Rulers as an episode for considering the ways that Dante works through the ‘dynamic relationship of text and image to enhance our reading and understanding’ as well as to prepare for the visible parlare to come, see Christopher Kleinhenz, ‘Dante’s Artistry in Purgatorio’ MLN, 134 (2019): S40–S55 (S41). Kleinhenz notes that the presentation of the Valley happens along artistic lines, via references to painting and gestural language. ⁵⁸ ‘And see the next who’s spread his palm to form / a bed on which to lay his sighing cheek’ ⁵⁹ See, for instance, Chiavacci Leonardi, p. 216, n. 91–136, and Frederick Goldin, Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology and a History (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983), pp. 312–15. ⁶⁰ See Chiavacci Leonardi, p. 219, n. 107–8, and also Kleinhenz, ‘Dante’s Artistry’, S45 for further bibliography on this point, including those, like Kleinhenz, who take the artistic mode as more akin to a painting.

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l’altra man tiene ascosa la faccia lagrimosa (47 (CIV ), 19–25)⁶¹

The gesture takes on all the sorrow of exile, all the detached melancholy of the inability to act. It is a typical transparent signifier in medieval manuscript illustrations and paintings, denoting sorrow. In the valley of the rulers, the gesture becomes necessary to speak for the silent ruler who is viewed from a distance and does not speak for himself. From Dante’s detached viewpoint, away from the possibility of dialogue with these souls, it is as if he is viewing a cycle of frescoes with a guide to direct his eyes to the relevant details. Thus the language of visual art is taken up; the shorthand gesture for sorrow appears here, but in a form that, in the light of closer attention to the context, bespeaks more specifically exilic melancholy at the state of one’s home. Sordello’s ‘directorial’ commentary prompts a mode of viewing that emphasises the individual element’s significance within a specific interaction and also within a broader frame. The sequence makes it clear that engaging with what is being shown necessitates a practice of observation that proceeds from a view of the whole to close attention to a series of interactions. The intensity of this exercise is followed up by an address to the reader to ‘aguzza qui, lettor, ben li occhi al vero’ (Purg. 8, 19)⁶² in the following canto, as our vantage point widens once more to reveal the pageantry of the arrival of the angels. It seems reasonable to suppose that this might be a habitual mode of observing a cycle of frescoes or mosaics; upon entry into a space like the Baptistery of San Giovanni, one might first marvel at the multitude of colours and effects as Dante does when he first views the valley of the rulers: ‘oro e argento fine, cocco e biacca, / indico legno lucido e sereno, / fresco smeraldo in l’ora ch’e’ si fiacca’ (Purg. 7, 73–5),⁶³ before turning to give attention to each of the scenes in sequence, finally broadening one’s gaze again to contemplate the whole in light of the detail observed, possibly creating new trajectories of observation through the material that come to light through visible parallels and that give greater meaning to the cycle as a whole. The list of Purgatorio 6 takes the form of four terzine, the first two beginning with ‘Quivi’ (‘There’), the third with ‘Vidi’ (‘I saw’) and the fourth with a name, ‘Pier da la Broccia’. In the second terzina, we witness a vivid gestural ⁶¹ Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. Gianfranco Contini (Turin: Einaudi, 1995), p. 175. ⁶² ‘Reader, now fix a needle eye on truth.’ ⁶³ ’Gold, finest silver, cochineal, white lead, / indigo, ebony polished to a sheen, / the freshest emeralds when they’ve just been split.’

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recall of Virgil’s Aeneid: ‘Quivi pregava con le mani sporte / Federigo Novello’ (‘And here as well, with hands stretched out in prayer, / was Frederick Novello’, 16–17). The combination of the sense of the group, as presented swiftly, and the single eloquent gesture of reaching hands brings the reader to the scene of Aeneid VI, a constant intertext in Dante’s Commedia: ‘stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum / tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore’ (Aen. VI, 313–4).⁶⁴ The souls crowded on the banks of the Styx are the unburied, those who must wait a hundred years on the shores. Like the souls in Ante-purgatory, their state is one of waiting and appeal. The gesture of outstretched hands links the two groups of souls visually for the reader of both texts, who awaits the gloss of the next passage to find their difference.⁶⁵ Here, in the hermeneutics of gesture and response, we learn that gestures that may look identical between Virgil’s text and Dante’s are treated differently. In the visual economy of the scene, the pairing of a gesture seen in an authoritative foundational text with a gestural dynamics commonly seen in the humble gambling places of the medieval Italian city releases a new Christian attitude of response. When Dante asks about the status of such appeals, as crystallized in the extended hands in both texts, he puts his question again in gestural terms: El par che tu mi nieghi, o luce mia, espresso in alcun testo che decreto del cielo orazion pieghi: e questa gente prega pur di questo; sarebbe dunque loro speme vana, o non m’è ’l detto tuo ben manifesto? (Purg. 6, 28–33)⁶⁶

The question is based on the Sibyl’s statement to Palinurus, who has appealed to Aeneas for help to cross the Styx: ‘Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando’ (Aen. VI, 376).⁶⁷ The notion of the possibility or impossibility of divine turning or bending in response to human appeal is echoed in Dante’s text. The question of the possibility of ‘piegare’ brings us back again to the key set of images ⁶⁴ ‘They stood, pleading to be the first ferried across, and stretched out hands in yearning for the farther shore.’ On the similarities between the Virgilian list and Dante’s list, see Francesco D’Ovidio, Nuovi studii danteschi: Il Purgatorio e il suo preludio (Milan: Hoepli, 1906), pp. 406–7. ⁶⁵ This is what Nancy Vickers refers to as ‘differential imitation’ in ‘Seeing is Believing’, p. 81. ⁶⁶ ‘It seems that you, my Light, / deny overtly in a certain text / that prayers can ever bend what Heaven dictates. / And yet these folk are praying just for that. / Could it be that the hopes they have are vain? / Or is it that your words aren’t clear to me?’ ⁶⁷ ‘Cease to dream that heaven’s decrees may be turned aside by prayer.’

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established in Purgatorio 5: the tower in the wind versus the tree that sends out pliable new growth of shoots in varied directions. Virgil now expressly revisits his previous statements, both in Purgatorio 5 and in the Aeneid: La mia scrittura è piana, e la speranza di costor non falla, se ben si guarda con la mente sana: che cima di giudicio non s’avvalla perché foco d’amor compia in un punto ciò che dè sodisfar chi qui s’astalla; e là dov’io fermai cotesto punto non s’amendava, per pregar, difetto, perché ’l priego da Dio era digiunto. (Purg. 6, 34–42)⁶⁸

The words ‘cima di giudicio’ clearly echo his ‘sta come torre ferma, che non crolla / già mai la cima per soffiar di venti’ (‘Stand straight, a mighty tower unwavering, / its height unshaken by such breaths of wind’, Purg. 5, 13–14). Again, Virgil affirms that the ‘cima di giudicio’ does not bend, ‘non s’avvalla’, as he finds a different way to consider how human love may reach towards the mark, not singly, but in concert with other souls, praying in non-disjointed ways from the divine will. The mark of just recompense is not lowered, but may be better reached by the joining of multiple human wills in ‘foco d’amor’ on the part of the living, satisfying debt on behalf of the waiting souls. This is what D’Ovidio calls the ‘distribuzione del risarcimento’.⁶⁹ Virgil revisits and adds to, but does not alter the visual imagery of his sense of what ethical constancy or divine judgement looks like. A new visual imagery of a Christian ethics of response to the other, in contrast with the unbending solidity of the tower elaborated and re-elaborated thus far, comes not from Virgil’s speeches, but rather from the dynamism of encounter with another soul whose own response to Virgil will illustrate a ⁶⁸ ‘The words I write are plain. / And yet, if you look closely with sane thought, / the hope that these all have will never fail. / God’s justice at its summit does not sink / because, in one sharp point, the fire of love / completes what those who dwell here expiate. / So, in the passage where I made this point, / no flaw could ever be redeemed by prayer. / For prayer was then not linked or joined to God.’ ⁶⁹ D’Ovidio, Il Purgatorio e il suo preludio, p. 401.

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divergent set of gestural and attitudinal possibilities. The soul appears ‘sola soletta’: Venimmo a lei: o anima lombarda, come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa e nel mover degli occhi onesta e tarda! Ella non ci dicea alcuna cosa ma lasciavane gir, solo sguardando a guisa di leon quando si posa. (Purg. 6, 61–6)⁷⁰

Like the souls in Limbo, who are described as having ‘occhi tardi e gravi’ (‘whose eyes were firm and grave’) and speaking little, ‘parlavan rado’, Sordello’s attitude puts him firmly in the category of the ‘spiriti magni’ (‘ancient heroes’, Inf. 4, 119).⁷¹ Benvenuto notes that ‘Leo enim magnanimus non movetur nec curat eum qui non molestat eum’, equating the immobility of the lion with the pose of the magnanimi.⁷² Benedetto Croce referred to Sordello as the ‘Farinata of Purgatorio’.⁷³ As Teodolinda Barolini has emphasized, there are numerous textual elements that link the two episodes: statements on love of patria, and what she refers to as ‘deliberate correspondences in the presentations of the two characters, correspondences that are heightened by intentional verbal echoes’.⁷⁴ If we look at the nature of these correspondences, we can see immediately that they are gestural, postural, and visual correlates, drawing the reader to forge not only aural but also visual links across the textual span of the poem just as one might between the iterations of figural compositions in Duccio or Giotto, where a set composition returns with an altered gesture drawing attention to itself. As Farinata is ‘quasi sdegnoso’ (‘half-scornfully’, Inf. 10, 41), so Sordello is ‘altera e disdegnosa’ (‘proud […], how haughty’, Purg. 6, 62). In both cases Dante (and the reader with him) is called to see there: ‘Vedi là Farinata che s’è dritto: / da la cintola in sù tutto ’l vedrai’ (‘See there, uprisen, Farinata. / From cincture upwards you will see him whole’, Inf. 10, 31–2) and ‘Ma vedi là un’anima che, posta / sola soletta, inverso noi riguarda’ (‘But over there you see a soul alone, / alone placed there who stares across at us’, Purg. 6, 58–9). Barolini qualifies ⁷⁰ ‘We came towards it. O you Lombard soul! / How proud you stood, how haughty in your look, / your moving eye so grave and dignified. / The soul did not say anything at all. / It let us make our way, still looking on, / as hunting lions do that pause and couch.’ ⁷¹ This has been widely recognized over the centuries, beginning with Benvenuto da Imola. ⁷² ‘For the magnanimous lion remains unmoved and does not concern himself with anyone who does not bother him.’ Benvenuto da Imola, commentary on Purg. 6, 64–75, accessible via Dartmouth Dante Project, available at: . ⁷³ Benedetto Croce, La poesia di Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1921), p. 112. ⁷⁴ Teodolinda Barolini, ‘Bertran de Born and Sordello: The Poetry of Politics in Dante’s “Comedy”’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 94.3 (1976): 395–405 (p. 398).

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the Sordello episode as a ‘purgatorial corrective’ to Farinata.⁷⁵ This ‘corrective’ functions with formal links, such as the positioning of figures, rendered with the difference of the dynamism of the movement out of the isolated vertical axis into an embrace in the Sordello episode. As Giuseppe Ledda has noted, the comparison to a lion, while coherent in terms of a postural description of stately repose, also has a different set of semantic inflections. Ledda points out that the lion’s association in medieval bestiaries with Christ and with the resurrection indicates that Sordello, unlike the other magnanimi in Limbo, is destined to be resurrected, after purgatorial penance, to eternal life.⁷⁶ I would add to this that the resurrectional implications of the lion find a gestural illustration in the lines that follow. Sordello’s subsequent movements are a visual anticipation not only of his own future resurrection, but also model an attitude of response to others that is deliberately set against the gestural immobility of the magnanimi.

Gesture as interruption E ’l dolce duca incominciava ‘Mantoa …’, e l’ombra, tutta in sé romita, surse ver’ lui del loco ove pria stava, dicendo: ‘O mantoano, i’ son Sordello, della tua terra!’; e l’un l’altro abbracciava. (Purg. 6, 71–5)⁷⁷

As critics have widely discussed, Sordello’s impetuous reaction to the prompt of the named place, Mantua, offers an example of love of one’s homeland, as set against the list of victims of regional strife earlier in the canto.⁷⁸ But I would like to emphasize something additional: Sordello’s explosive gestural transformation from stasis and inward contemplation to the impulsive and affectionate embrace of his interlocutor. The language of the passage is marked out in heavily embodied terms that are poised to draw the reader’s attention to this change. Sordello’s static pose is first drawn out in Dante’s verse, with vivid potential connections through a network of classical and biblical associations, from the ⁷⁵ Barolini, ‘Bertran de Born and Sordello’, p. 398. ⁷⁶ Giuseppe Ledda, ‘Canti VII–VIII–IX: Esilio, penitenza, resurrezione’ in Esperimenti danteschi, Purgatorio 2009, ed. Benedetta Quadrio (Milan: Marietti, 2010), pp. 71–104 (pp. 77–80). ⁷⁷ ‘My thoughtful guide began, / “Mantua …” The shade—so dark-cowled, sunk within— / rose up towards him from where first he’s been, / saying: “You Mantuan! I am Sordello. / Your fellow citizen.” And each round each flung arms.’ ⁷⁸ See, for example, Giorgio Inglese, p. 93, n. 75, amongst many others.

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Aristotelian magnanimo as seen in the noble souls of Limbo, to the scriptural associations of the lion. Now that pose is brought to culmination in the phrase ‘tutta in sé romita’ (‘sunk within’), an encompassing image of self-enclosure. The transformation is all the more startling given the placement of ‘romita’ at the end of the line, followed by ‘surse ver’ lui’ (‘rose up towards him’) at the beginning of the next. What happens when our model of classical stillness is first infused with the scriptural bestiary image of the lion and then visibly transmuted into dynamism and spontaneous affectionate impulse towards the other? That ‘surse ver’ lui’ leads to reciprocal engagement, as the ‘l’un l’altro abbracciava’ emphasizes, although neither soul knows the identity of the other. For Sordello, it is enough to hear Virgil say ‘Mantoa’, and for Virgil, it is enough to see the soul’s impulse towards him to engage him in a mirrored act of reciprocal affection. The immediacy of this turn is palpable, born of the careful choreography in Dante’s text from a set of images of stillness and their associated ethics to this startling gestural turn to a swift movement towards the other. But what new ethics is associated with this dynamism? Sordello here is allied with all the descriptions of swiftness in the preceding cantos, such as the ‘messaggi’ who ‘corsero incontr’a noi’ (‘nuncios […] hurried to meet us’, Purg. 5, 28–9) and the extended description of the souls’ swift movement as ‘vapori accesi’ (‘vapours […] kindled’) of Purgatorio 5 (37). In the light of this turn here, we may now note how cantos 5 and 6 consistently line up two semantic groups: images of swiftness and of stillness. It is here, in this moment of affectionate encounter between Sordello and Virgil, that Sordello’s gesture becomes the hinge, the point of encounter between these two semantic groups. It is only here that we see how the two systems of ethics and virtue, the classical and the Christian, can meet: Quell’anima gentil fu così presta, sol per lo dolce suon della sua terra. di fare al cittadin suo quivi festa; e ora in te non stanno sanza guerra li vivi tuoi, e l’un l’altro si rode di quei ch’un muro e una fossa serra. (Purg. 6, 79–84)⁷⁹ ⁷⁹ ‘That noble soul was moved with such great speed / to greet his fellow citizen, to hear—no more than that!—the sweet sound of their home. / Yet those who live within your boundaries / stand nowhere free of war. Each gnaws the next, / all locked together by one wall and moat.’

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In this further elaboration, Sordello’s pivot from stillness and self-enclosure to swiftly rising to his feet and embracing Virgil is characterized in further affective terms while the image is still fresh in the reader’s mind. Sordello is described as a soul that is ‘presta’ to ‘fare al cittadin suo quivi festa’, with the rhyme on ‘presta’ and ‘festa’ consolidating the compelling power of this affectionate image. Such spontaneous affectionate joy is thrown into relief by the stark contrast with the following terzina, against the horrific ‘l’un l’altro si rode’, locked between ‘guerra’ and ‘serra’. That ‘l’un l’altro si rode’ reverberates in multiple ways, a negative mirror to the gesture under discussion here, ‘l’un l’altro abbracciava’, and, of course, at a distance of only seven cantos, from Ugolino’s desire for ‘infamia al traditor ch’i rodo’ (‘to slur this traitor, caught between my teeth’, Inf. 33, 8). It is here that we may see a gestural choreography of Christian response to the other placed against the dark backdrop of the effective cannibalism between factions in Dante’s Italy.⁸⁰ The state of being in readiness to celebrate the other, if we may translate ‘fare festa’ in this way, is the signal attitude here, sketched out as a rising towards the other, coming forth from seated repose and self-enclosure, and a reaching out to embrace. The gesture stages an interruption of speech as Sordello’s words and sudden movements truncate Virgil’s self-presentation, creating the conditions of astonishment. In the disjunction between a cannibalistic situation of conflict in their contemporary Italy and the embrace of Sordello and Virgil, gesture becomes event, exposing the horror of historical conditions for what they are.⁸¹ If we search later in Purgatorio and Paradiso, we may see how this attitude continues to be modelled as a joyful response to the other, as against any vision of enclosure within the self, and as against the sense of any individual as rigid as a high tower in the wind. We might put it another way in the terms elaborated by Adriana Cavarero, in her book Inclinazioni. As a critique of the ‘io in posizione dritta e verticale, […] un soggetto che si attiene alla verticalità dell’asse rettilineo che funge da principio e da norma nella sua postura etica’, Cavarero picks up from a line in Hannah Arendt, ‘ogni inclinazione ci sporge all’esterno, ci porta fuori dall’io’.⁸² Via pathways through art and iconography, ⁸⁰ On the political and poetic implications of this embrace, see Olivia Holmes, ‘Virgil and Sordello’s Embrace in Dante’s Commedia: Latin Poeta Meets Vernacular Dicitore’, Mediaevalia, 36/37 (2015): 79–117. ⁸¹ For a discussion of how historical conditions can be exposed by gesture, see Butler, ‘When Gesture Becomes Event’. ⁸² ‘I in a straight and vertical position […] a subject that sticks to the verticality of the rectilinear axis that works as principle and as norm in its ethical posture’ and ‘Every inclination leans us to the external, takes us outside ourselves.’ Adriana Cavarero, Inclinazioni: Critica della rettitudine (Milan: Cortina, 2013), p. 14.

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Cavarero lays out a philosophy of inclination, taking the image of the Virgin Mary bending towards the vulnerable infant as her visual centrepiece. Inclination and dynamism towards encounter that is systematically opposed to the straight or the vertically self-sufficient becomes the dominant ethics of the Purgatorio. To articulate this further, we might consider the dynamism of the adjective ‘presta’, used to qualify Sordello’s movement as it shapes a certain kind of positive and modelled action throughout the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. In Purgatorio 18, the soul’s very inclination to love is described in these terms: ‘creato ad amar presto’ (‘created quick to love’, Purg. 18, 19). In Purgatorio 19, ‘una donna apparve santa e presta’ (‘a lady—holy and alert— appeared’, 26) to help Dante in his moment of need when the siren sings. But the strongest recall of Sordello’s movement comes in Purgatorio 26, where the shades are described in their movements that transform lustful tendencies into pure charity and love for the other: Lì veggio d’ogne parte farsi presta ciascun’ombra e basciarsi una con una sanza restar, contente a brieve festa (Purg. 26, 31–3)⁸³

Here the rhyme, ‘presta’ and ‘festa’, brings forth a strong recall of Sordello’s movement. The ‘accoglienza amica’ of these souls is a nother model of this comportment. For the lustful, this penitential practice offers the opportunity to celebrate the impulse towards the other in the mode of love that finds its proper rhythm, ‘brieve festa’, in human proportion to the infinite love shared with God, a human love for the other that learns to be measured in that rhythm ‘sé stesso misura’ (‘sets itself […] a due control’, Purg. 17, 98). Swiftness of loving response to the other is celebrated in Paradiso, as we see in Paradiso 8, ‘tutti sem presti / al tuo piacer’ (‘We are all quick to hear / what you might please’, 32–3). The ‘presta–festa’ rhyme, reversed in order, reappears in Paradiso 21: Giù per li gradi della scala santa discesi tanto sol per farti festa col dire e con la luce che mi ammanta; né più amor mi fece esser più presta, ⁸³ ‘I saw on either either side the shadows kiss. / They did not cease, however, in their course, / each one content to keep the frolic brief.’

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che più e tanto amor quinci sù ferve sì come il fiammeggiar ti manifesta. (Par. 21, 64–9)⁸⁴

The earthly assumption would be that Pietro Damiani’s coming forth from the others, being swifter to ‘fare festa’, indicates greater love. In this heavenly context, Pietro’s love is no greater than the others in his group, and Dante’s attention is re-directed towards the heavenly gesturality of such love, the ‘fiammeggiar’ displayed by the others. From our earthly vantage point, however, it is helpful to see the assumptions that Pietro knows dominate Dante’s mortal reasoning. Love in earthly and purgatorial contexts is visibly recognizable in this swiftness towards the other, as we have seen in Purgatorio. To return, then, to Purgatorio 6, we may better discern the pivot between, on the one hand, classical virtues of the vertical, the magnanimo, and the stability of the straight line and, on the other hand, a new sequence of Christian models of swiftness of movement towards the other, of the inclined, maternally inflected pose of care, of the humble sounding and yet entirely paradisiacal ‘fare festa’. We might characterize this dynamism as visible solicitude, plucking and salvaging the term ‘solicito’ from its darkly ironic employment in this canto, in which it is pointed like a dagger against Florence: Molti rifiutan lo comune incarco, ma ’l popol tuo solicito risponde sanza chiamare (Purg. 6, 133–5)⁸⁵

But solicitude can be considered one of the principal Marian virtues, and could provide a helpful handle for the Christian pose we are considering here as it appears against the backdrop of the classical model. The rulers are depicted singing ‘Salve, Regina’ (Purg. 7, 82), invoking Mary’s intercession, soon to be staged in the mandate of the angels ‘del grembo di Maria’ (‘from Mary’s breast’, Purg. 8, 37), who swoop down to guard the valley against the serpent. If we accept that Purgatorio establishes a Marianization of classical tempos, postures, and gestures, then we need terms to conceptualize this new mode, born ⁸⁴ ‘I have descended down the holy stair / as far as this to bring you only joy, / with speech and with the light that mantles me. / Nor does more love to you make me more quick. / For that same love, and more, seethes upwards here / as all this flaming-out displays to you.’ ⁸⁵ ‘Many refuse to take on public tasks. / But your lot, so solicitous, unasked, / reply with shouts.’

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of humility rather than magnanimity.⁸⁶ Ante-purgatory thus becomes the terrain of encounter between classical models and the Christian model embodied in Mary. As each of the terraces will celebrate Marian exempla and virtues, the most relevant here, in the slow atmosphere dominated by the negligent and laterepentant of Ante-purgatory, are those virtues presented to counter sloth or accidia.⁸⁷ Across the Purgatorio, sets of kinesic examples and counterexamples appear readily, but we may note that these examples begin to articulate themselves in Ante-purgatory without clear distinction, yet. Seeking later in the Purgatorio, we find increasingly vivid kinesic models for virtues and vices. In the examples of zeal in Purgatorio 18, we hear ‘Maria corse con fretta a la montagna’ (‘Maria hastened up to Juda’s hill’, Purg. 18, 100). Dante references Mary’s rush to offer help to Elizabeth after hearing from the angel that Elizabeth was expecting a child. As Dante emphasizes elsewhere, Mary is characterized by her generous loving rescue of those who have not yet even managed to ask for help (Inf. 2, 94 and Par. 33, 16–18). If we examine the passage in Luke from which Dante takes the example, ‘exsurgens autem Maria in diebus illis abiit in montana cum festinatione’ (‘In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country’, Luke 1:39), we may hear and feel the tempo and mood that is echoed in Sordello’s transformation. Like Mary, Sordello rises up ‘surse’, and his movement is described as ‘presto’, aligned with Mary’s rush, ‘con fretta’ (echoing the biblical ‘cum festinatione’). This kinetic exemplar is the antidote for negligence, and thus a visible countering force to slowness and rigidity in Ante-purgatory as well as the terrace of the penitent slothful, but also is more broadly applicable to the whole of the Purgatorio, as souls reorient their mode of response to those around them. The episode of Sordello’s embrace of Virgil is emphasized textually by the fact that it spans the long invective of Purgatorio 6 to re-emerge at the opening of Purgatorio 7: poscia che l’accoglienze oneste e liete furo iterate tre e quattro volte, Sordel si trasse, e disse: ‘Or voi, chi siete?’ (Purg. 7, 1–3)⁸⁸ ⁸⁶ On the series of subtle allusions to the Virgin throughout the Commedia, see Brian Reynolds, ‘Morphing Mary: Pride, Humility, and Transformation in Dante’s Rewriting of Ovid’, Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, 126 (2008): 21–55. ⁸⁷ George Corbett notes that ‘sloth dominates the moral colour of Ante-Purgatory’ in Dante’s Christian Ethics: Purgatory and Its Moral Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), p. 133. ⁸⁸ ‘Three or four times, with solemn happiness, / the welcome each gave each had been renewed / till, drawing back, Sordello said: “Who are you?”’

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The invective has a different verbal gestural urgency of its own, punctuated with repeated calls such as ‘A hi’, ‘O’, and ‘Vieni a veder’ (‘Come now, and see’, Purg. 6, 106, 109, 112), swiftly shifting the targets of those appeals from Italy itself to the Church, to the Emperor, to God, and finally to the city of Florence. But it is entirely framed by its counterpoint in the joyful embrace. The text returns to this embrace as an image that the reader might hold firm as counterweight to the existing horror of divisions upon divisions in Italy.⁸⁹

Imagery of the Visitation The dynamism of solicitude evoked with such economy in ‘Maria corse con fretta a la montagna’ (‘Maria hastened up to Juda’s hill’, Purg. 18, 100) may, in its citational brevity, rely on the ‘visual libraries’ (to use Lucia Battaglia Ricci’s term) of Dante’s imagined readers. Prominent images of the Visitation from Dante’s time can supply medieval visual vocabularies to help us better delineate the bodily attitude and its tempos evoked here. I would suggest that there is a visual and gestural link between Visitation imagery and the embraces that punctuate the Purgatorio. The emphasis is on that generous, solicitous, charity-filled impulse towards the other, a projection out of the vertical axis and into proximity and encounter. In the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, the mosaics, dating from 1240–1300, display a wonderfully dynamic Visitation scene, in which Mary and Elizabeth are projected towards one another in an urgent embrace (Figure 3.1).⁹⁰ Each has a knee raised in exuberant movement towards the other, such that those knees almost touch, forming a symmetrical triangle of golden space down to their feet, which again almost meet. Above, their arms cross in embrace, with Mary’s hand almost to Elizabeth’s face and Elizabeth’s arm just beneath, starkly white against Mary’s blue, reaching around Mary’s extended arm.⁹¹ As their faces draw close, their halos overlap, in a dramatic drawing together of human forms that can be seen again in Giotto’s Scrovegni

⁸⁹ On the emphasis given to this embrace, and on reading this embrace in the context of others in the Commedia, see Manuele Gragnolati, ‘Ombre e abbracci. Riflessioni sull’inconsistenza nella Commedia di Dante’ in Passages, seuils, sauts: Du dernier cercle de l’Enfer à la première terrasse du Purgatoire (Enf. XXXII–Purg. XII), ed. Manuele Gragnolati and Philippe Guérin, Chroniques Italiennes 39 (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2020), pp. 30–43, as well as his chapter ‘La nostalgia del Paradiso e gli abbracci della Commedia’ in Amor che move. Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2013), pp. 91–110. ⁹⁰ On the importance of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Dante’s thought, see Chapter 1. ⁹¹ https://www.wga.hu/html_m/zgothic/mosaics/7baptist/06baptis.html.

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Figure 3.1 Visitation, Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence. Public domain.

Chapel, not to the same degree in his Visitation, which is more restrained by contrast, but in the Meeting of Gioachim and Anna at the Golden Gate.⁹² In the carvings of Nicola Pisano’s pulpit in the Duomo of Siena, 1265–8, the Visitation is given a prominent place between the Annunciation and the Nativity, as in the Baptistery of San Giovanni, with Mary and Elizabeth shown with heads tilted towards one another in an expression of solidarity in wonder as they grasp each other’s hands in greeting.⁹³ The Scrovegni Chapel Visitation scene finds its full articulation when read not only within the narration of the life of Mary but also, given its position on the triumphal arch and the subtle game of correspondences with colours and forms, as a prominent example of virtue against the vice visible in Judas’s betrayal in the Pact of Judas scene that appears opposite (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). As Alpatoff notes, the visual likeness of the two scenes positioned opposite one another on the arch is heightened by colours: the triad yellow, red, green. He further notes that the Pact of Judas is not in its natural narrative position, but carefully placed in such a way that these relationships are made clear.⁹⁴ ⁹² On Giotto’s more direct borrowings from the Baptistery of Florence, see, for instance, Edward Francis Rothschild and Ernest Hatch Wilkins, ‘Hell in the Florentine Baptistery Mosaic and in Giotto’s Paduan Fresco’, Art Studies: Medieval, Renaissance and Modern, 6 (1928): 31–5. ⁹³ On the decision in Siena to move the Annunciation to the corner, leaving more space for the Visitation, see Creighton E. Gilbert, ‘The Pisa Baptistery Pulpit Addresses Its Public’, Artibus et Historiae, 21.41 (2000): 9–30 (p. 10). ⁹⁴ Alpatoff, ‘The Parallelism of Giotto’s Frescoes’, p. 152.

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Figure 3.2 Giotto, Visitation, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

Derbes and Sandona have shown in further detail how the Pact of Judas is meticulously set in opposition to the Visitation scene.⁹⁵ Describing it as a coincidentia oppositorum, a confrontation of meaningful opposites,⁹⁶ Derbes and Sandona argue that Giotto has ‘manipulated the standard iconographic rendering’ of various scenes, including the Meeting at the Golden Gate and the Betrayal of Christ, in order to align postures and gestures and in so doing to enhance the visibility of the parallel between pairs.⁹⁷ The contrast ⁹⁵ Derbes and Sandona, ‘Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb’. ⁹⁶ Derbes and Sandona, ‘Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb’, p. 274. ⁹⁷ Derbes and Sandona, ‘Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb’, p. 282.

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Figure 3.3 Giotto, Pact of Judas, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

is thus carefully arranged and particularly stark for the Pact’s opposition to the Visitation. A reading of the visual imagery of the Visitation in its opposition to the Pact may be enhanced by an examination of the more explicit oppositions in the cycle of the Vices and Virtues also present in the Scrovegni Chapel. Located at eye level, the frescoed dado zone of the Scrovegni Chapel has painted depictions of stone sculptures of the Virtues on the south wall and the Vices on the north wall. Each has paintings of a chiselled medieval Latin titulus above

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and an inscription below in Gothic calligraphy.⁹⁸ While Dante’s ‘ekphrasis’ of the bas-reliefs of Purgatorio 10–12 has been compared to actual bas-reliefs of the time, such as the pulpit sculpted by Giovanni Pisano between 1298 and 1301 in Pistoia,⁹⁹ we might instead think of Dante’s self-conscious depiction of bas-reliefs in poetry in correspondence with Giotto’s equivalent self-conscious depiction of bas-reliefs in paint.¹⁰⁰ Both Dante and Giotto seem to suggest that vices and virtues can be particularly clearly ‘seen’ in bas-reliefs and strive to recreate, in their own media, this heightened visibility, all the while drawing attention to the artifice.¹⁰¹ Scholars have suggested that Giotto’s Virtues and Vices can be seen as ‘didactic intermediaries’, and that similarities between their gestures and the gestures in the more complex scenes viewed above can help lead the viewer from concepts to the illustration of those concepts.¹⁰² The faux bas-relief vices and virtues make explicit the oppositions that are presented in different detail in the coincidentia oppositorum of the Visitation and the Pact of Judas; Invidia and Karitas are directly opposed with a series of thematic and gestural links (Figures 3.4 and 3.5).¹⁰³ Invidia clutches a money bag, while Karitas shows her contempt for temporal goods by standing upon a pile of money bags, holding instead a bowl displaying nature’s bounty in the form of fruit and flowers that are symbols of Christ’s passion and selfoffering.¹⁰⁴ Derbes and Sandona argue that in this way Karitas is explicitly linked to fecundity, as against the sterility of Invidia.¹⁰⁵ In the parallelism between the Visitation and the Pact, gestural and postural differences are emphasized. Judas and Caiaphas both stand straight. Judas clutches the bag of money in his hand as graspingly as the figure of Invidia. Invidia’s other clawing hand is echoed in the position of Caiaphas’s right hand.

⁹⁸ For transcriptions of the inscriptions that remain, see Claudio Bellinati, Giotto. Padua felix. Atlante iconografico della Cappella Scrovegni (1300–1305) (Ponzano Veneto: Vianello, 2000), pp. 132–7. ⁹⁹ Scott, ‘Canto XII’, pp. 186–91. ¹⁰⁰ On the nature of illusion and simulated reliefs in paint in the Chapel, see Henrike Christiane Lange, Relief Effects: Giotto’s Triumph, PhD diss., Yale University, 2015, available at: https://ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/relief-effectsgiottos-triumph/docview/1701975812/se-2?accountid=9851. ¹⁰¹ On the ways that the personified Virtues and Vices are a convergence of figurative arts with medieval memory theories, see Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico: Dissemblance et figuration (Paris: Flammarion, 1990), pp. 64–9. See also Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 92–4. ¹⁰² See, for example, Bruce Cole, ‘Virtues and Vices in Giotto’s Arena Chapel Frescoes’ in Giotto and the World of Early Italian Art: An Anthology of Literature, ed. Andrew Ladis (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 369–95. ¹⁰³ On gestural echoes of Invidia in The Betrayal, the Mocking, and the Way to Calvary, see Matthew G. Shoaf, ‘Eyeing Envy in the Arena Chapel’, Studies in Iconography, 30 (2009): 126–67 (pp. 139–40). ¹⁰⁴ For a detailed reading of the contents of the bowl, see Giuliano Pisani, ‘La concezione agostiniana del programma teologico della Cappella degli Scrovegni’ in Alberto da Padova e la cultura degli Agostiniani, ed. Francesco Bottin (Padua: Padova University Press, 2014), pp. 217–70 (p. 229). ¹⁰⁵ Derbes and Sandona, ‘Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb’, p. 282.

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Figure 3.4 Giotto, Invidia, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

The interaction between Judas and Caiaphas is as if melded together in the single figure of Invidia. Mary and Elizabeth, conversely, lean towards one another. Elizabeth reaches fully from the waist towards Mary, while Mary gently inclines her head and both figures reach their arms towards one another, crossing their arms to the viewer’s eye. Elizabeth’s fingers appear on Mary’s body under her right arm, as Mary’s fingers hold Elizabeth’s left arm, with ring and little finger disappearing under the curve of that yellow-garbed sleeve. Karitas, the virtue that opposes Invidia, stands firmly upon the sorts of money bags that Judas and Invidia so vainly grasp, her skirts folded defiantly upon their bulging surfaces. As the Visitation stands to the Pact alongside a reading of Invidia against Karitas, we see that the figures of the Pact stand in poses of inflexibility, while Mary and Elizabeth model solicitude and care as they reach and lean towards one another.

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Figure 3.5 Giotto, Karitas, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

We may detect traces of what we might call ‘visitational dynamisms’ in the Holkham manuscript illustrations of Sordello’s static seated pose, with ankles crossed and hands on knees, alongside Sordello’s ‘surgere’ (rising up) in his embrace of Virgil (Figure 3.6).¹⁰⁶ Just to the right of his seated figure, we see Sordello with right leg extended towards Virgil, left foot poised on his toe to give a sense of dynamism as he moves towards his fellow Mantuan. Unlike Sordello’s seated figure, where his head aligns with his shoulders in an upright vertical, his embracing figure pushes his head forward on his neck towards Virgil. Both arms extend and cross Virgil’s arms. Virgil’s right hand wraps around Sordello’s slender back and his left hand, like Elizabeth’s in Giotto’s ¹⁰⁶ Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Holkham misc. 48, p. 67. Image available here: https://digital. bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/10974934-30a5-4495-857e-255760e5c5ff/surfaces/dbc6a5da-e061-44d481d4-ac9fc25c18d2/.

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Figure 3.6 Sordello and Virgil. © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. MS. Holkham misc. 48, p. 67 (detail).

Visitation, rests firmly under Sordello’s arm. Virgil’s head reciprocally stretches towards Sordello, while Dante stands just behind Virgil, his hand on Virgil’s back. In the contrast between Sordello’s seated pose and his movement to embrace, the Holkham illustration offers a striking reading of this gestural crux of Ante-purgatory. As we have seen in this brief tour through the choreography of poses, gestures, and movements in Purgatorio 5 and 6, Dante’s Ante-purgatory may be read as the terrain of encounter between classical models and Christian ones. Here, the models and antimodels that appear in Inferno meet the Christian model embodied in Mary. Reading visually with attention to gestural parallelisms and contrasts, asking ourselves to alternate between a vision of the whole and attention to single interactions, we may more fully see how, in this instance, Dante’s Sordello becomes a new model of solicitude, with his signature gestures rendered meaningful through implicit connections to both Christic and Marian iconographies.

4 Modelling Gestural Virtues in Dante’s Purgatorio Ante-purgatory, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is a space dedicated to the complex choreographies of mode-shifting. To move through and with the encounters of Ante-purgatory, Dante consciously, and even awkwardly, reconfigures his sense of movement with and towards others. Purgatory proper, accessed in the wake of that reconfiguration, presents its own set of challenges. The greatest of these has to do with participation in the ongoing penance on each terrace. Penance is often enacted through gestural and postural practices that Dante temporarily takes part in along with the shades he encounters. Reading and fully engaging with these penitential practices is challenging work and, as I will seek to show in what follows, kinesic visualization and gestural elaboration may offer the most direct ways in to what the text presents.¹ Cantos 10–27 of Purgatorio are laden with examples of vices and virtues: the most explicit of these are those visible or audible to Dante at the entrance and exit of each terrace.² But the encounters with penitents have exemplary qualities as well, which can be better discerned in light of the threshold manifestations of the virtues and vices. The penitents tend to betray, in their speech, a mixture of unhealed tendencies towards the vice tangled up with decided and resolute work towards the opposing virtue. Nonetheless, the gestural and postural practices that they perform as part of their penance are often the ones that, as I noted in the case of the terrace of pride in Chapter 1, invite imitation or inclusion on the part of Dante as he encounters them, and, potentially, on the part of the reader who seeks out models to help move them towards a particular virtue or away from a particular vice. ¹ I am using the term ‘kinesis’ to indicate ‘the interactional perception of movements performed by oneself or another person’, as in Bolens, The Style of Gestures, p. 2. ² On sources and systems of purgatory, see Delcorno, ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’. For a detailed analysis of systematization of the vices of pride, sloth, and avarice, see Corbett, Dante’s Christian Ethics. As Lino Pertile puts it, ‘a metaphor can be seen to have become, by analogy or antithesis, painfully “real”; and that is how the individual experience of purgation acquires its universal value as exemplum’. ‘Contrapasso’ in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 219–22 (p. 222). Dante, Artist of Gesture. Heather Webb, Oxford University Press. © Heather Webb (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.003.0005

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When we speak of what is ‘exemplary’, it is important to make some distinctions in the varied functions of each of the elements of every terrace: the virtues, the encounters with the penitents, as individuals and in groups, and then the vices. The virtues provide a poignant affective image to aspire to, but are not always accessible as an attitude to immediately step into. The penitents, conversely, may present a mix of attitudes on the spectrum between the virtue and its opposing vice but generally display an accessible somatic practice that is immediately available, such as bowing or lying prostrate on the floor. The vices presented later allow the healed penitent to engage in sorrow for those who did not take up the opportunity to reconfigure their behaviour.³ Of course, not all the exemplars of the virtues and the vices appear in visual form. And among the penitents, the wrathful are heard rather than seen, from within a dense cloud of smoke. There is no question that Dante employs a wide variety of means in order to transmit examples of virtue and vice on each terrace. Numerous cases are oral, and, in fact, scholars have argued for an emphasis on the verbal in the exemplarity of Purgatorio, linking this aspect to preaching.⁴ In this chapter, however, I will place my focus on striking gestural exemplars that are distinctly visual, seeking to show how these images of virtue link up with existing iconographies and somatic practices to form memorable, inhabitable penitential spaces in which readers may engage with the communal gestures of Purgatory. The descriptions of visual exempla are textually much lengthier, while the verbal exempla are characterized by a poetics of brevitas.⁵ The textual space devoted to visual exempla seems to correspond to Dante’s gaze, allowing for attention to somatic detail, and gestural visualization of the virtues in question. In this way, the rhythm of the ‘ekphrastic’ descriptions corresponds to a choreography, a way of moving through virtual space, as if we readers, with the poet, were invited to linger for a specific amount of time on each of the images presented before the mind’s eye.⁶ It has been noted that Dante’s idea to oppose each vice with a virtue exemplified by a story from the life of Mary may derive from the Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, as well as an extended tradition of such correspondences in the Summae for confessors.⁷ Stephen of Bourbon, in his Tractatus de diversis

³ See my Dante’s Persons, and Delcorno, ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, p. 16 on Purg. 12: ‘li guarda con la malinconia raccolta di chi visita una tomba di famiglia’. ⁴ On questions of variety in the examples and the preponderance of the verbal, see Delcorno, ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, p.8. ⁵ Delcorno, ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, p.10. ⁶ On the question of textual space and the poet’s movement, see Delcorno, ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, p.10. ⁷ Delcorno, ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, p. 8.

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materiis predicabilibus, calls exempla ‘sermo corporeus’, noting the efficacy with which such examples could be used by preachers to imprint themselves in the heart of the listener: ad hec suggerenda et ingerenda et imprimenda in humanis cordibus maxime valent exempla, que […] faciliorem et longiorem ingerunt et imprimunt in memoria tenacitatem […] Sermo enim corporeus facilius transit de sensu ad ymaginativam et de ymaginacione ad memoriam.⁸

It is particularly in regard to these examples that Frances Yates proposed reading Dante’s Commedia as a vast memory system, with images as examples of vice and virtue carefully distributed in order.⁹ Having considered the interaction with examples of humility in Chapter 1, and solicitude in Chapter 3, this chapter will focus on two further sets of images, beginning with the exempla of the virtue of mildness and then moving on to disentangle the potential exemplary qualities in the gestures of the penitent gluttons through consideration of associated virtues.

Mary and Stephen: Gestures of mildness On the terrace of wrath, Dante receives three ecstatic visions of mildness or gentleness. Two of these are particularly gestural, and one of these is, I will suggest, precisely one of those sorts of cognitively sticky gesture that stimulates enhanced engagement on the part of the reader.¹⁰ The first is the gestural shape ⁸ ‘Examples are very effective in prompting, imposing, and imprinting these things in human hearts, as they impose and imprint an enduring hold in the memory more easily and for longer. For corporeal speech travels more easily from the senses to the imagination and from the imagination to the memory.’ Albert Lecoy de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, legends et apologues tires du recueil inédit d’Etienne de Bourbon (Paris: Renouard, 1877), pp. 4–5, cited in Delcorno, ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, p.4. Delcorno calls the Commedia the ‘più grande e la più bella somma di similitudini e di esempi’ of the many works of this genre, particularly mendicant works, in Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. ⁹ Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 95–6. ¹⁰ On the visionary in this canto, see Simon Gilson, ‘Purgatorio XV’ in Lectura Dantis Bononiensis, Vol. 7 (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2017), pp. 101–15. On the concreteness of the visions, and their ekphrastic nature, see Pasquini, Pigliare occhi, p. 121; Arielle Saiber, ‘Virtual Reality: Purgatorio XV’ in Lectura Dantis: Purgatorio, ed. Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 151–66.

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of Mary, who, as on every terrace, speaks or shows the virtue that is to be emulated: una donna, in su l’entrar, con atto dolce di madre dicer: ‘Figliuol mio, perché hai tu così verso noi fatto?’ (Purg. 15, 88–90)¹¹

The detail of Mary’s figure, poised at the door in the vision, in an unspecified but carefully characterized gesture (‘atto / dolce di madre’), is one that Dante adds to the account in Luke.¹² Dante provides no detail, conversely, for the ‘vedere in un tempio più persone’, but moves the focus of the vision onto Mary’s ‘atto dolce’ as paired with her words. The affect of the gesture is described as sweet and maternal, while the Virgin shows restraint and humility by lingering on the threshold. The maternal gesture itself is undefined but easily available to any reader’s imagination or personal memories. In the Scrovegni Chapel, where the scene also appears, Giotto seems to have particularly considered Mary’s gestures as well. While Jesus is central in the scene, in this case, seated among the doctors in the temple, Mary and Joseph seem just to emerge from between columns on the left. But, notably, both Mary’s arms are eagerly extended at full length from the colonnade into the semicircular space where Jesus sits, reaching out between the heads of two doctors.¹³ Mary’s emphatic gesture of extended arms from the edges of the circumscribed space of the temple is also notable in Duccio’s Maestà. In the Egerton 943 (f. 90r), the illustrator of Dante’s text has Mary gracefully extend an opened hand not towards Jesus but towards the visionary Dante, just breaking her rocky frame where she is set off from Dante and Virgil, and reaching with sweetness as if towards Dante himself (Figure 4.1). In a faithful illustration of the emphases and elisions present in Dante’s text, the Egerton illustration chooses to leave Jesus out in order to place emphasis on Mary. While the focus in Luke falls on the exceptional nature of the child declaring his divine father, the exemplarity of the Purgatorial vision depends on the mother’s gesture, on showing her sweet gentleness to the one in need of visions of virtue. Before presenting us with the next example of gentleness, Dante’s text draws us to compare Mary’s mildness to ‘un’altra con quell’ acque / giù per le gote che ¹¹ ‘A lady stood who said— / sweet in her manner as a mother is—: / “Why, dearest son, have you done this to us?”’ ¹² See Luke 2:40–8: ‘Fili, quid fecisti nobis sic?’ On Dante quoting Mary’s words in the Gospels, see Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio’s commentary to Purg. 15, 85–105. ¹³ Laura Pasquini compares Dante’s text and this painting in Pigliare occhi, pp. 123–4.

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Figure 4.1 Dante’s visions of Mary and Peisistratus’ wife. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 90r (detail).

’l dolor distilla / quando di gran dispetto in altrui nacque’ (Purg. 15, 94–6),¹⁴ Pisistratus’ wife. As elsewhere, the example is interwoven with its opposite, ¹⁴ ‘A second woman now appeared to me. / Her cheeks were washed with streams that grief distils / when grief is born in us from angry scorn.’

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throwing the virtue into sharp contrast. The Egerton illustration fully enacts this form of representation by means of contrast, asking the viewer of the illustrated visions to perform a close gestural comparative read of Mary versus Pisistratus’ wife. The two visions are very close on the page, divided by just three tercets (88–96) of text. The intervening lines of text bridge Mary’s reaction and the description of Pisistratus’ wife; thus the illustrations, set on both sides of this text, are set in clear but visibly contrasting parallel.¹⁵ In both images, Dante follows Virgil at some distance, with veiled eyes and face to figure his state of ecstasy. What Dante sees appears just beyond a ridge of stone. In the first, Mary and Joseph appear under an arch, flanked by people, ‘più persone’ (87). Mary reaches almost to Dante, her palm facing towards him and her fingers open, gently curved, inclining her head delicately towards him as she reaches out. Pisistratus and his wife also appear under an arch, but are alone. Like Mary, Pisistratus’ wife is in blue (though it is a less elaborate gown), and she is flanked by a male figure in red. Like Mary, she gestures with her right hand. But, unlike Mary, Pisistratus’ wife keeps her head firmly upright, and, hand raised close to her face, points her index finger in accusation. The precise depiction of the two gestures encourages the viewer to note the changed element within a repeated spatial and figural construction. The contrasting gestural indications in the text, Mary’s ‘atto dolce di madre’ against Pisistratus’ wife’s tears of ‘gran dispetto’, are enlarged and magnified into gesturing hands in the illustrations, offering an attentive, gestural meditation on the embodied kinesic opposition constructed in the text. The next vision is one that Dante adapts from Acts 7:55–60: Poi vidi genti accese in foco d’ira con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte gridando a sé pur: ‘Martira, martira!’ E lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte che l’aggravava già, inver’ la terra, ma degli occhi facea sempre al ciel porte, orando a l’alto Sire, in tanta guerra, che perdonasse a’ suoi persecutori, con quello aspetto che pietà diserra. (Purg. 15, 106–14)¹⁶ ¹⁵ Anna Pegoretti notes that the text and illustration are so well aligned in this manuscript that often the verses surrounding the images work almost as a caption. See Indagine su un codice dantesco, p.123. ¹⁶ ‘I saw, next, crowds enflamed in fires of wrath, / all yelling out to all a loud “Kill! Kill!”, / stoning a young man to the point of death. / And he, I saw, bowed down towards the earth / as death imposed on him its heavy weight, / yet still he bore his eyes towards the skies / (his look that look which opens

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In the exquisite economy of Dante’s version, Dante seems to have condensed two disparate temporal moments in Acts into a single, gesturally dense and complex moment.¹⁷ In the biblical account, Stephen has a divine vision that he reports: ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’ (Acts 7:56). This so enrages the mob that they cover their ears, drag him out of the city, and stone him. As he is being stoned, he prays for the acceptance of his soul, then falls to his knees and prays for those murdering him. In Dante’s kinetically contradictory

e lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte che l’aggravava già, inver’ la terra, ma degli occhi facea sempre al ciel porte, (Purg. 15, 109–11)¹⁸

we sense the immensity of Stephen’s will to maintain focus on God in the heavens while his body is slumping as death slowly overcomes him. Somatically, the passage is difficult to visualize. Stephen is bowed and bent; two verbs, ‘chinarsi’ and ‘aggravare’, accumulate physical sensations of downwardness. It has been suggested that the verb ‘aggravare’ recalls language from Aeneid IX to describe the death of the young and beautiful Euryalus, whose neck is weighed down like a poppy in the rain:

volvitur Euryalus leto, pulchrosque per artus it cruor inque umeros cervix conlapsa recumbit: purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo demisere caput pluvia cum forte gravantur (433–7)¹⁹ pity’s lock) / praying in so much that the Heaven’s Lord / should pardon those who’d hunted him to death.’ ¹⁷ On the coincidence in Dante’s account of the two episodes, see Theodore J. Cachey Jr., ‘Purgatorio XV’, Lectura Dantis, 12 (1993): 212–34 (esp. p. 226). ¹⁸ ‘And he, I saw, bowed down towards the earth / as death imposed on him his heavy weight, / yet still he bore his eyes towards the skies.’ ¹⁹ ‘Euryalus rolls over in death; over his lovely limbs runs the blood, and his drooping neck sinks on his shoulder, as when a purple flower, severed by the plough, droops in death; or as poppies, with weary neck, bow the head, when weighted by a chance shower.’ Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. See the commentary by Giacomo Poletto, gloss on Purg. 15, 109–14.

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Dante opts to make Stephen young in his vision, like Euryalus, which is a revision of his biblical sources, in which Stephen is instead a mature man.²⁰ There is little question that Dante is playing upon the emotions of the reader here, evoking ‘quello aspetto che pietà diserra’. The revisionary youth of Stephen adds to the reader’s capacity to feel pity, and may do so also in alignment with the Virgilian evocation of a youthful beauty beaten down like a flower in the rain, as well as with existing iconography of Saint Stephen with a fresh-faced aspect, as in Giotto’s depiction in the Museo Horne in Florence.²¹ As the biblical account swiftly notes two instances of Stephen’s prayer in the midst of the stoning, first for himself, and then, on his knees, for those murdering him, Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend expands significantly on the question of kneeling. The Golden Legend comments: See here his wondrous love! He stood while praying for himself, but praying for those who stoned him he knelt, as though he desired that the prayer he offered for them be heard even more than the prayer he poured out for himself. He knelt for them rather than for himself, because, as the Gloss says at this place, their greater iniquity demanded a greater supplication to remedy it.²²

In Dante’s account, the doubly qualified downward kinesis of Stephen’s body, whether kneeling in greater supplication, or, as in the Virgilian reference, bending in death, is countered by the description of his eyes as gateway to the heavens. How does a body, so bent down, still maintain a gaze heavenward?²³ This kinesically contradictory knot impels our attention on the exemplary openness upward to the divine even as death pulls the body down. We may read Stephen as kneeling by supplementing Dante’s text with the biblical account and commentaries like that of Jacobus de Voragine. Or we may recall, through the echo of Virgil’s potently tragic line, a young body bent like a beautiful flower in the rain. In that case, we are prompted by the stickiness of Dante’s description to revise or re-view that classical gestural memory with a ²⁰ On the issue of youth in the visions, see Cachey, ‘Purgatorio XV’, for youth as a theme running throughout his analysis of the canto. ²¹ On the Giotto Saint Stephen as potential reference, see Fedele Romani, ‘Il martirio di Santo Stefano’ in Raccolta di studii critici dedicate ad Alessandro D’A ncona (Florence: Barbèra, 1901), pp. 539–42, and Inglese, p.196, n. 107. ²² Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, with an introduction by Eamon Duffy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 48. ²³ Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi explains that Stephen bends down in the sense that he kneels, a detail that must be interpolated from the biblical source, and that he either bends back or on his side, ‘la grande terzina sembra seguire il movimento contrario del capo e dello sguardo’, p. 452, n. 109.

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difference, by implanting within that vision the divergence of an upward gaze, Dante’s kinesically challenging miracle of redemptive spiritual lifting in the midst of that folding. Might Dante have seen the Lapidazione di Santo Stefano fresco in San Lorenzo in Palatio, in the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum in Rome?²⁴ It has been argued that Dante could have been in Rome between 1300 and 1301. The fresco dates to 1277–80 and depicts Stephen centrally in a highly dynamic bodily state. As his murderers launch stones at him from behind, he tips forward. His feet are behind him and his knees lower to the ground, but his precarity is such that we see a clear trajectory: after falling to his knees, further stones will knock his body forward to the ground. But in this moment, his hands are raised in prayer and his neck arches back at an extreme angle so that his eyes look upward to the figure of Christ who reaches down in blessing from the upper right corner. A number of illustrations of the passage in Dante seem to have read the kinetic situation in a similar way. The Paris Arsenal 8530, 88v (Italian, mid fourteenth century), shows Stephen kneeling in prayer with a sweet smile on his face and his face turned upward to share an intimate gaze with Christ’s face that appears directly above him. But here, in this lovely, static vignette, there is none of the precarity or somatic contradiction that the passage in Dante shares with the Roman fresco. The Egerton 943 (f. 90v), conversely, positions Stephen in an untenable position, tilted forward, with his head thrown back (Figure 4.2). A sharp stone has just struck his head and vivid blood runs down his head and back. But his face turns upward with urgency. The Egerton manuscript illustration contrasts Stephen’s focused intensity, poised between heaven and earth, with the frenetic movements of his persecutors. Their arms flail upward to cast stones from terrible proximity. The Egerton illustrations, like Dante’s text, take care to show the exemplary virtue in contrast with Stephen’s wrathful attackers, or Pisistratus’ wife’s disdainful tears. Such balance allows the virtuous exemplars to become more visible; Pisistratus appears only in the wake of the description of his wife: ‘E ’l segnor mi parìa, benigno e mite, / risponder lei con viso temperato’ (Purg. 15, 102–3).²⁵ These types of opposition are a key source of navigable meaning in the Scrovegni Chapel, where Giotto opposes Ira, who, like Caiaphas, tears

²⁴ For the suggestion that Dante may have seen this, see Pasquini, Pigliare occhi, p. 122. ²⁵ ‘That lord, to me, seemed mild and generous / and—temperate in expression—answered her.’

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Figure 4.2 Dante’s vision of the stoning of Stephen. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 90v (detail).

open her gown, baring her chest defiantly upward, with the figure of Temperantia.²⁶ Temperantia’s arms, instead of tearing outward, gather inward towards the centre of her body, as she wraps her sword in bandages, rendering it harmless. She holds a bridle in her mouth, to keep her speech in check, and keeps her eyes cast slightly downward and to the side. Gesturally, her ²⁶ Giuliano Pisani explains Giotto’s different choice in his therapy of opposites between vices and virtues in the case of Ira by recourse to Augustinian concepts. Dante, like Aquinas and others, opposes Ira with mildness, gentleness, or patience. See his discussion in ‘La concezione’, p. 222.

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pose is one of containment. While Mary reaches out, Temperantia, like Pisistratus, refuses to attack. In visual and textual exempla, contrasting gestures create a network of meaning, allowing readers and viewers to locate further elements on a spectrum between opposing extremes. In Dante’s Purgatorio, the penitents take precisely this place, framed between visions of vice and virtue.

Reaching This section proposes a kinesic reading of the gluttonous penitents’ act of reaching, as described in Purgatorio 24, via examination of a selection of illustrations of the Commedia dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Is this reaching simply a visible remnant of the vice? Or is there something already in the act of reaching that points towards virtue? My analysis suggests that artists have recognized in Dante’s text a crucial tipping point between desirous acquisitiveness and an act of prayer. Their illustrations render visible the dynamism of the gesture as enacting this penitential transformation. Illustrators, in thinking through the range of the gesture, and showing it in a variety of stages, have achieved a perspective on the passage that textual commentary has not fully elaborated. In other words, the hermeneutic and spiritual difficulty of the penance here may be best approached by readers who employ their kinesic intelligence to think and feel through the gesture of reaching upward beyond their habitual frame of movement.²⁷ Illustrations provide an instance of the illustrator’s kinesic intelligence on display, along with evidence of care in the illustrator’s task to aid viewers in their own elaboration of the transition from vice to virtue staged in the Purgatorio. I will suggest that Dante’s particularly engaging image on the terrace of gluttony, that of the extremity of the gluttons’ reaching for the tree and its fruit, is one of many sites in the text where readers must employ their imagination around a set of words in order to understand not only the gesture but the spiritual condition or transformation that gesture indicates to the reader or viewer. The dynamism of the gesture described can articulate, in the reader or illustrator’s extended visualization, further dynamisms staged before and after the single highly defined moment. It is in this imagined or illustrated temporality of the gesture that the penitential mechanisms of Purgatorio can be worked out. ²⁷ On kinesic intelligence for interpreting images, see Ellen Spolsky, ‘Elaborated Knowledge’, p. 157. On kinesic intelligence for interpreting texts, see Bolens, The Style of Gestures.

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On the terrace of gluttony in Purgatory, Dante sees two trees, laden with sweet-smelling fruit and bathed with clear water.²⁸ As he approaches the second tree, he witnesses the actions of the penitent souls: parverm’i rami gravidi e vivaci d’un altro pomo, e non molto lontani per esser pur allora vòlto in laci. Vidi gente sott’esso alzar le mani e gridar non so che verso le fronde, quasi bramosi fantolini e vani che priegano, e ’l pregato non risponde, ma, per fare esser ben la voglia acuta, tien alto lor disio e nol nasconde; poi si partì sì come ricreduta, e noi venimmo al grande albero addesso che tanti preghi e lacrime rifiuta. (Purg. 24, 103–14)²⁹

The simile is full of dynamism, harnessing the potent power of a familiar kinetic situation and its associated affective charge in order to render this mysterious penitential act somehow comprehensible.³⁰ The shades of the gluttons are reaching towards the fruit of the tree, a descendent of the tree of good and evil in Eden. But the gesture of reaching is far more complex than it might appear at first. The lines present a description with just the right density, deftly calibrated to stimulate our kinesic intelligence. It is not only that the shades reach, but, Dante offers, they reach with that intensity of a child who is tempted by an adult who holds a treat just out of reach. This textually delineated infantile reaching immediately produces a vivid mental image composed of interacting parts, of straining arms and heads thrown back in strict correspondence with an adult arm stretched upward as well, and an adult head tilted down towards the children. The affective component of the simile is also ²⁸ See Purg. 22, 130–8. ²⁹ ‘There then appeared to me, ripe branched and bright, / a second fruit tree, not so far from us, / just there around the bend that we’d now turned. / Beneath, I saw a group that raised their hands / and called towards the leaves I-don’t-know-what, / like silly, over-eager little tots, /who plead—although their target won’t respond / but rather seeks to whet their appetite, / dangling, unhidden, what they want aloft. / Then off they went (as though they’d changed their minds). /And we ourselves arrived at that great tree / which turned aside so many tears and prayers.’ ³⁰ Commentators have noted how particularly ‘visible’ this image is. See for example: ‘si consideri la bellezza di questa comparazione, colta dal vero e resa con tratti cosí fedeli che l’azione appare quasi agli occhi del lettore con tutti i caratteri della realtà’ (Casini-Barbi). Cited in Nicola Fosca, comment on Purg. 24, 106–11.

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viscerally clear; the adult is not cruel but loving. The desired object will, in time, be allowed. The children may pray in vain now, but eventually they will not be disappointed. Every detail that emerges from the simile serves to render the penitential experience clearer. And it is only in this way that Dante reveals the mechanisms of penitence. Despite some brief clarifications, there is no full and sustained exposition of the mechanisms of penitence in Purgatorio. Rather, each penitential situation must disclose its content through a variety of means, including dialogue with one or more penitent shades and observation of their postural and gestural comportments. It is here that study of the illustration of these penitential practices becomes so highly productive, as we can thus witness how early readers ‘saw’ postural and gestural penance in the poem, and how they thus read the content of the penance and even its possibilities for other readers of the poem and viewers of their illustrations. The illustration of this gesture in the Egerton 943 Commedia (Figure 4.3) might at first glance seem a disappointing rendering of the extremity of reaching that the simile of the child yearning for the upheld treat could prompt.³¹ The penitents stand in a composed manner beneath the tree. The first penitent holds his arms close to his body, bent and tending upward only from the elbow, his hands open, as if in prayer. The second has his arms in the same position, but with his hands pressed together in prayer. Both of these penitents have their heads tilted back as they gaze at the fruit. The third penitent is even more restrained, palms closed together in prayer like the shade before him, and head inclined slightly downward. It is as if the illustrator has ignored the simile of the children and focused only on the use of the verb, ‘pregare’: ‘che pregano e ’l pregato non risponde’ (‘who plead—although their target won’t respond’, 109). The reading that is rendered visible on the Egerton f. 107 takes a particular view on the difficult question of how penance works in this case. If we look for clues to the mechanisms of purgation on other terraces, we might think of Pope Adrian IV’s explanation on the terrace of avarice: sì come l’occhio nostro non s’aderse in alto, fisso ale cose terrene, così giustizia qui a terra il merse (Purg. 19, 118–20).³² ³¹ 107r., viewable at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=egerton_ms_943_f107r.. ³² ‘Because our eyes were fixed on earthly things, / at no point raised to look towards the heights, / so justice sinks them here within the earth.’

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Figure 4.3 The gluttonous beside the tree. © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 107r (detail).

The penance for avarice renders the state of the vice a physical, postural extremity for the shades. In that mode, we would imagine the gluttons reaching with excessive ardour towards the apples on the tree in the same way that they grasped at food in life. In other cases, as in the case of pride, the proud penitents adopt the posture of humility they lacked in life, working through experience of an extremity of the opposing virtue, rather than experience of the excess of their vice: ‘la grave condizione / di lor tormento a terra li rannicchia’ (‘The grievous mode of punishment […] / so creases them and bends them to the ground’, Purg. 10, 115–16). The inhuman bending on the part of the proud constitutes what Giorgio Inglese calls an obvious contrapasso, as a reversal of the pose of the lion of Inferno 1, an image of pride with ‘la testa alta’ (‘its ravening head held high’, 47).³³ ³³ Inglese, p. 141, n. 116.

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In choosing to show the gluttons’ reaching as composed prayer, the illustrator of the Egerton suggests that rather than taking their vice to a physical extremity, they are converting their desire to prayer. Just as, in the audible examples of virtue on this terrace, Più pensava Maria onde fosser le nozze orrevoli e intere ch’ala sua bocca, ch’or per voi risponde (Purg. 22, 142–4)³⁴

Mary’s mouth is moved not for eating but for verbally responding on behalf of the needs of others, the shades here employ their hands not for reaching in the sense of taking, but for the purposes of prayer. In the visual commentary unfolded within the Egerton Commedia, rather than working through an extremity of the shades’ desire for food, the illustrator suggests that the shades are already substituting that desire with a different one. The shades depicted here are presented as unproblematic models of prayer and comportment for the viewer. The Holkham Hall 514 depiction of the Bodleian Library (Figure 4.4) takes a different tack and instead shows the souls almost levitating in the extremity of their reaching.³⁵ Of the eight shades visible on p. 103, all of them are fully extending their arms from the pivot point of their shoulders, reaching as high as possible towards the tree. The first soul is indeed leaping towards the tree, with only the toes of his left foot possibly in contact with the roughly shaded ground, his right leg bent and lifting from the hip. The Yates Thompson 36 of the British Library, illuminated in Tuscany by an artist whose identity is not known for the canticle in question, between the years 1442 and 1450, also shows arms outstretched to an extreme, with hands splayed open towards the tree.³⁶ I would like to turn particular attention to Sandro Botticelli’s illustrations to cantos 23 and 24 of the Purgatorio, for what Barbara Watts calls their ‘blend of faithful illustration and reflective interpretation’.³⁷ There has been much ³⁴ ‘Maria thought far more / of how the wedding might be full and fine / than of that mouth by which she prays for you.’ ³⁵ Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Holkham misc. 48, viewable at: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ objects/10974934-30a5-4495-857e-255760e5c5ff/. ³⁶ On the identity of the artist for the Purgatorio canticle of the Yates Thompson Commedia, see Milvia Bollati, ‘Gli artisti. Il Maestro della Commedia Yates Thompson e Giovanni di Paolo nella Siena del primo Rinascimento’ in La Divina Commedia di Alfonso d’A ragona re di Napoli: Manoscritto Yates Thompson 36, ed. Milvia Bollati, 2 vols. (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2006), vol. 1, pp. 63–138. ³⁷ Barbara J. Watts, ‘Artistic Competition, Hubris, and Humility: Sandro Botticelli’s Response to “Visibile Parlare”’, Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, 114 (1996): 41–78 (p. 44).

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Figure 4.4 The gluttonous. © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. MS. Holkham misc. 48, p. 103 (detail).

debate about the precise dates of Botticelli’s illustrations of the Commedia, but it seems clear that work on them began in the 1480s.³⁸ Botticelli’s illustrations for the two cantos work in tandem.³⁹ What is striking in both of them are the ways in which Botticelli has understood the complexity of the shades’ act of reaching towards the tree. The two illustrations each bring together the elements observed in the Egerton, the Holkham Hall, and the Yates Thompson illustrations. In the illustrations for cantos 23 and 24 (Figures 4.5 and 4.6), we see shades in various gestural modes around the tree. One presses his hands together at chest level in a traditional gesture of prayer. Another throws his arms fully upward, hands splayed and open. Another bends his elbows but opens his hands. Another seems to be very clearly reaching for fruit, with his hands close together and fingers just nearing the tempting apples. It is this range of gestural attitudes, and the dynamism that Botticelli shows with his ³⁸ Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, 3 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1568), vol. 1, p. 472, comments that upon his return to Florence, Botticelli ‘per essere persona sofistica commentò una parte di Dante: & figurò lo inferno’. Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg suggests that Botticelli must have begun c. 1480 and ceased work on the drawings by c. 1494–5. See ‘“per essere persona sofistica”: Botticelli’s Drawings for the Divine Comedy’ in Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy, ed. Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000), pp. 13–35. See especially pp. 23–8 on the difficulties with dating the drawings. ³⁹ Schulze Altcappenberg notes numerous compositional links between the two illustrations, see Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy, p. 188.

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Figure 4.5 Botticelli, Purgatorio Canto 23. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

vast numbers of figures in such a variety of poses, that is of interest here; the array of movement he depicts suggests the possibility of viewing the various temporalities of purgation. We know that the shades we meet in Purgatorio are in various stages of completing their purgation and that the penance and the attitude (physical and spiritual) of each is highly individualized, as we are told immediately in the case of the prideful: ‘Vero è che più e meno eran contratti / secondo ch’avien più e meno a dosso’ (‘The truth is each was hunched up, less and more, / according to his load, some more, some less’, Purg. 10, 136–7). While Dante’s text introduces us to a limited number of penitents in each case and thus offers what we are meant to understand as ‘snapshots’ of a limited number of points along individual trajectories of penance, Botticelli’s reading of the text leads him to illustrate the full range of penitential possibility. He thinks through the implication of the reaching gesture and draws through, in a number of sequences, a way to understand the nature of the penance in the case of the gluttons. In Botticelli’s interpretation, reaching towards the tree visibly takes multiple forms, ranging from acting out the actual desire to seize the fruit to devout prayer at the base of the tree. The illustrations can be seen as a study of how the practice of reaching towards an object may be converted in the fullness of time to prayerful reaching towards God.

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Figure 4.6 Botticelli, Purgatorio Canto 24. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

In other words, Botticelli takes the simile of the reaching children to think through how acquisitional reaching may be reconstrued as a prayerful act. While hands pressed together at chest height are easily read as a gesture of prayer, many other gestures with open hands in Botticelli’s illustrations of these two cantos can also be read as gestures of prayer but remain, to various degrees, open to interpretation as potentially positioned between gestures of prayer and gestures of reaching for the purposes of grasping something. Once viewers put themselves to work in this ongoing act of visual interpretation, it becomes possible to begin to appreciate the delicacy of Botticelli’s construction of the tipping point between the tendency towards vice and the turn to the opposing virtue. In the move from the hands that reach to grab and to take and the hands that throw themselves upward in praise and adoration, we may see distilled in Botticelli’s illustrations all the gestural potency of the act of penitence depicted in Dante’s Purgatorio. Words and gestures work together in Dante’s understanding of penance, in what Alessandro Vettori calls ‘an amalgamation of speech, movement, and prayerful action’.⁴⁰ The psalm cited here with just three words ‘Labia mea, ⁴⁰ Alessandro Vettori, Dante’s Prayerful Pilgrimage: Typologies of Prayer in the Comedy (Leiden: Brill, 2019), p. 71.

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Domine’ (Psalm 50, verse 17), prompts the reader to fill in the well-known missing text (‘Domine, labïa mëa aperies et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam’), placing emphasis on the use of the mouth for praise.⁴¹ As Benvenuto da Imola explains, this is a key form of reconceiving that is necessary for the penance here: Quae oratio optime competit gulosis istis, quasi dicant: Labia et os quae exercui multum et saepe ad manducandum et bibendum, nunc, o Deus, aperi ad laudandum et glorificandum nomen tuum cum tanto studio et maiori.⁴²

To see in better relief what these gestures point towards, I’d like to turn to some further visual correlates of this reaching that is depicted by Dante. In addition to Psalm 50, we may detect the presence of other psalms that prompt a redeployment of the mouth for praise, but also a redeployment of the hands for prayer rather than grasping. In the treatise on the nine ways of prayer of Saint Dominic, the seventh way describes the saint:⁴³ Inueniebatur nichilominus sepe orando erigi totus ad celum per modum sagitte electe de arcu extenso proiecte sursum in directum, eleuatis manibus sursum supra caput fortiter extensis atque coniunctis inuicem, uel aliquantulum ampliatis quasi ad aliquid recipiendum de celo. Et creditur quod augebatur ei gratia tunc et rapiebatur et impetrabat a deo pro ordine quem inceperat dona spiritus sancti […]. Et docebat uerbo et exemplo sanctus magister fratres sic orare, dicens illud psalmi […] Domine clamaui ad te, exaudi me, intende uoci mee cum clamauero ad te, eleuatio manuum mearum sacrificium uespertinum⁴⁴ ⁴¹ ‘O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.’ On the density of this reference in Dante in the context not only of the psalm but also the Matins preces, see Helena PhillipsRobins, Liturgical Song and Practice in Dante’s ‘Commedia’ (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2021), pp. 63–75. ⁴² Benvenuto da Imola, commentary on Purgatorio 23, 10-12. Trans. Vettori, Prayerful Pilgrimage, p. 71. ‘This prayer fits these gluttonous perfectly, as if they were saying: My lips and my mouth, which I used much and often to eat and drink, now, o God, open them to praise and glorify your name with much, and even more, care.’ ⁴³ On the postures of Dominic, see Schmitt, La raison des gestes, pp. 309–15. ⁴⁴ ‘also often found in his prayer stretching his whole body up towards heaven, like an arrow being shot straight up in the air: his hands were stretched right up above his head, either held together or open as if to receive something from heaven. At such times it is thought that grace increased in him, and that he was caught up in rapture, and that he won from God in prayer the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the Order he had founded. […] By word and example he taught the brethren always to pray like this, using the verse from […] Psalm 140: ‘Lord, I have cried to you, hear me, attend to my voice whenever I cry to you … the lifting up of my hands like an evening sacrifice.’ (‘The Nine Ways of Prayer’, pp. 88–9, trans. pp. 38–40).

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The lifting of hands is thus not only prayerful supplication, but also likened to sacrifice. The evocation of sacrifice is also present in Psalm 50 in the verses that follow the single cited verse in Purgatorio 23, 11: Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique; holocaustis non delectaberis. Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus; cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies. (Psalm 50:18–19)⁴⁵

Reaching open hands are conceived of as not only for receiving, but also for giving in the sense of self-sacrifice. This semantic reversal aligns with the penitential working through of Psalm 50 to conceive of the mouth with emphasis on the conferral of praise and prayer rather than the consumption of food. A similar gesture, understood as an enactment of Psalm 140, is the first gesture of prayer described in Peter Chanter’s treatise on penitence, the elevatio manuum.⁴⁶ In this first posture, the hands, joined, reach upward above the head, in such a way that the body shows how the heart tends towards God.⁴⁷ Peter cites Psalm 140 as a model of this mode of prayer.⁴⁸ Erminia Ardissino points out that the Purgatorio is the realm of ‘tensione’ towards God, taking up a statement from Giugo il Certosino, ‘La preghiera è la devota tensione del cuore verso Dio.’⁴⁹ Another visual context for a full extension of the arms may be found in the iconography of Saint Francis. To return to the diptych of the blessed Andrea Gallerani, for one example amongst many, Francis is shown with arms flung high and palms open. He is kneeling, which of course the penitents of Dante’s Purgatorio are not, but the extension of his arms as abandonment to the divine might well be described in the terms of childlike simplicity that Dante employs for his description. Francis’s pose is particular to the reception of the stigmata, but also, necessarily, displays self-offering. In that diptych, as I noted in Chapter 2, the blessed Andrea Gallerani is positioned in the lower register in parallel pose with Saint Dominic, just above him, while he is far more ⁴⁵ ‘For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted. A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.’ ⁴⁶ On the relevance of this gesture for Purg. 8, see Durling and Martinez, vol. 2, p. 134, and for further discussion my Dante’s Persons, pp. 76–82. ⁴⁷ Durling and Martinez, vol. 2, p. 134. For Peter’s description of this mode, see Trexler, The Christian at Prayer, pp. 182–3, and the pictures of Mode I on pp. 133–8. ⁴⁸ ‘Ideo enim cum oramus tenemur stare ut in erectione corporum ostendamus quod in laude dei debemus habere corda sursum erecta’ (Trexler, The Christian at Prayer, p. 183). ⁴⁹ ‘Prayer is devout tension of the heart towards God.’ Erminia Ardissino, ‘Pregar pur ch’altri prieghi’, pp. 45–6.

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constrained in his movements than Saint Francis, located diagonally above him.⁵⁰ Dominic’s quiet prayer, with arms gently extended from the elbow, is contrasted with Francis’s seraphic transportation. We might think of these penitent gluttons with their arms extended towards the tree as a form to correlate, as if in a lower register, with known visions of ecstatic reaching, like Francis’s. Certainly, the full extension of the arms is widely associated with transport. In the discussion of the seventh way of prayer of Saint Dominic, the text reports that Itaque sanctus pater in illo modo orandi non diu stabat, sed reuertebatur in seipsum, quasi de longinquo ueniens et uelut peregrinus mundo uidebatur, quod faciliter perpendi poterat in aspectu eius et moribus.⁵¹

Such rapture in prayer is reflected in the language of heightened affect in Canto 23, as in Forese’s: i’ dico pena, e dovria dir sollazzo, che quella voglia alli alberi ci mena che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì!’, quando ne liberò con la sua vena. (Purg. 23, 72–5)⁵²

That tipping point between pena and sollazzo is precisely what can be viewed in the gesture of reaching as ‘voglia’ in the process of transforming itself. It is an intensity that, like Saint Dominic returning from his rapture of prayer with extended arms, renders the penitents abstracted, ‘sì come i peregrin pensosi fanno’ (‘A s pilgrims do when deep in thought’, Purg. 23, 16). I would suggest that the delineation of this gesture here in Dante’s text does not serve only to elaborate the penance at work on the terrace of the gluttons, but works more broadly as a kinesic point of contact with a sequence of other gestures in the Commedia. The various forms of this gesture, like many others in the poem, can be tracked, along with their affective charge, across the various canticles, in order to better note and meditate upon parallelisms and ⁵⁰ See Dunlop, Art and the Augustinian Order, n. 63. ⁵¹ ‘And so the holy father was not accustomed to standing in that mode of prayer for a long time, but would come back to himself, as though he came from a far distant place, and seemed like one who was a stranger to the world, which could easily be surmised from his expression and his behaviour.’ See Tugwell, ‘The Nine Ways of Prayer’, p. 89. ⁵² ‘I call it pain. Rightly I should say solace. / For that same yearning leads us to the tree / that led Christ, in his joy, to say “Elì”, / when through his open veins he made us free.’

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contrasts. Here, the vivid imagery surrounding raised extended arms and the abstraction of pilgrims recalls Purgatorio 8: Ella giunse e levò ambo le palme, ficcando li occhi verso l’orïente, come dicesse a Dio: ‘D’altro non calme’ (Purg. 8, 10–12)⁵³

This gesture, conducted with solemnity rather than the frenetic intensity evoked in Purgatorio 24, is likewise placed in the context of another pilgrim simile: ‘era già l’ora […] che lo novo peregrin d’amore / punge, se ode squilla di lontano’ (Purg. 8, 1, 4–5).⁵⁴ This is a parallel juxtaposition of abstraction and intensity, between the pilgrim whose physical place is at odds with their thoughts, and the total absorption in the moment of rapt extension of the body in prayer or reaching with utmost desire upward. Like the soul whose corporeal gesture seems to speak the words, ‘D’altro non calme’ (‘For nothing else I care’), in their bodily extension, an example of a gestural visibile parlare, the simile of the child denotes a complete physical and spiritual tending towards a single objective. One form of absorption can tip into the other. Intensities of desire are the focus here, against that distracted abstraction of the pilgrim. Botticelli’s ever-so-faint preparatory sketch for Purgatorio 8 shows this parallelism between the two episodes clearly, with the praying shade extending his arms fully above his head, in a gesture that exactly mirrors that of several shades beneath the tree of Purgatorio 23 and 24. Barbara Palmer has described a category of gestures in medieval drama with the function of ‘reversals, signs of a monde renversé which jeopardizes the regulated community’.⁵⁵ In that spirit, we might identify an inverse parallel to this family of reaching gestures in Vanni Fucci’s obscene gesture of the ‘fiche’ in Inferno 25: Al fine delle sue parole il ladro le mani alzò con amendue le fiche, gridando ‘Togli, Dio, ch’a te le squadro!’ Da indi in qua mi fuor le serpi amiche, ⁵³ ‘This soul, first, joined his palms and lifted them, / eyes fixed towards the orient, as though / to say to God: “For nothing else I care.” ’ ⁵⁴ ‘It was, by now, the hour […] when by love the pilgrim, new to this, / is pierced to hear, far off, the evening bell.’ ⁵⁵ Barbara D. Palmer, ‘Gestures of Greeting: Annunciations, Sacred and Secular’ in Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art, ed. Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), pp. 128–57 (p. 144).

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perch’una li s’avvolse allora al collo, come dicesse ‘Non vo’ che più diche’, e un’altra ale braccia, e rillegollo, ribadendo sé stessa sì dinanzi, ch’e’ non potea con esse dare un crollo. (Inf. 25, 1–9)⁵⁶

Here the gesture of raised arms is performed in defiance, an insult to God that parodies the extension of the body in a gesture of prayer, and is immediately afterward contained by the snakes that tie up Vanni’s arms and fold them back upon themselves, immobilized.⁵⁷ Two snakes come forth here: one to silence the voice and one to silence the gesturing hands. Dante foregrounds the gesture, placing it at the opening of the canto, a shocking insult presented with full visual impact. Botticelli’s illustration seeks to show both the gesture and the correction. Vanni is shown in dynamic motion, with one knee forward as he raises the fiche above his head, arms fully outstretched upward with just the sort of straining extension we see in the illustrations of the praying soul of Purgatorio 8 and the ambiguously reaching souls of Purgatorio 23 and 24. But snakes are circling round Vanni’s neck menacingly. Thus the parallel of gestural intensities with contrasts emerges strongly across the canticles, from Vanni’s arms raised in insult, to the shade in the valley of the rulers, with arms raised in clear praise, to the desirous tipping of tendencies in the arms raised in Purgatorio 23. It is through the kinetic thinking of the illustrators that such parallels and contrasts emerge, drawing the reader and viewer into deeper engagement with the penitential and transformational possibilities encoded in the Purgatorio.

Reaching virtue in the Scrovegni Chapel We may excavate another set of resonances and parallels for thinking through the various penitential and acquisitional visions of reaching by returning to Giotto’s Virtues and Vices of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Karitas and Spes,

⁵⁶ ‘His words now reached their end. And then the robber / hoisted his hands on high—a fig-fuck formed in each— / and screamed: “Take that! I’m aiming, God, at you!” / From that point on, the serpents were my friends. / For one entwined its length around my neck / as if to say: “I’d have him speak no more.” / And then another bound his arms down tight, and clinched itself so firmly round the front / he could not shake or shiver in either limb.’ ⁵⁷ Ignazio Baldelli, ‘Le “fiche” di Vanni Fucci’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 174 (1997): 1–38. Luca Marcozzi, ‘La Rhetorica novissima di Boncompagno da Signa e l’interpretazione di quattro passi della Commedia’, Rivista di Studi Danteschi, 9.2 (2009): 370–89.

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located next to one another, are the two virtues of particular interest to us here. Both reach upward, in a sort of crescendo of dynamism of the virtues with respect to Prudentia, Fortitudo, Temperantia, Iusticia, and Fides, all composed and either seated or standing with arms close to their bodies. But Karitas and Spes, who are closest to the Last Judgement fresco, on the side of the blessed, both reach up, Karitas with one arm and Spes with both, towards figures of God and of Christ that appear in miniature just outside the upper right corner of their painted marble frames, reaching reciprocally towards them. More broadly, the directionality of the reaching of these two Virtues tends ultimately beyond their already exceeded framing towards the seated Christ in the Last Judgement. Karitas, firmly standing on the same money bags that Invidia clutches so avidly, is poised in a gesture of offering her heart to God, who reaches down from the upper right-hand corner, interrupting two layers of painted marble framing, to accept it (Figure 3.5). Karitas’s arm extends fully upward from the shoulder, reaching all the way until her hand, with her heart gently grasped in her fingers, extends into the first frame of faux white marble behind her. While her body is squarely within the inner dark rectangle behind her, she exceeds that boundary at three points: in the hand that gives her heart to God, in the hand that offers an overflowing bowl of fruit at hip level, and in her feet that stand squarely and disinterestedly on bulging money bags. The figure of Spes, closest to the Last Judgement, is lighter, reaching fully with both arms extended from the shoulder and both hands with fingers slightly parted and fully extended towards the crown that the small figure of Christ holds just beyond her reach (Figure 4.7). The Christ figure is in a similar position to the small figure of God the Father that accepts Karitas’s gift.⁵⁸ Winged, Spes levitates, and her feet trail just behind her, protruding outward and to the side of the containing rectangle. Her fingers, likewise, just exit the frame as she seems to float upward towards her crown of glory. Her entire extended body forms a graceful diagonal line that can be traced not only towards the small figure of Christ in the near corner, but also, if that imaginary line is extended, to the large figure of Christ in the Last Judgement. A gestural parallel to the reaching, levitating figure of Spes may be seen in one of the frescoes above, in the Ascension of Jesus in Heaven.⁵⁹ Illustrating Acts 1:9–11, the scene shows Jesus top and centre, floating in a mandorla with his feet loosely wrapped in white cloud. He is flanked by angels, saints, and the blessed, while beneath him two angels address the apostles and the Virgin. ⁵⁸ See Basil de Selincourt, Giotto (London and New York: Duckworth and Company, 1905), p. 162f. ⁵⁹ Selincourt, Giotto, p.162; Lange, Relief Effects: Giotto’s Triumph, pp. 257–9.

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Figure 4.7 Giotto, Spes, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

The positioning of his body and his gesture is exactly mirrored in the figure of Spes, from the angle of the diagonal line formed by the body to the positioning of the feet trailing behind, the gentle bend of the right knee, and, above all, the degree of extension of the reaching arms. One intriguing difference is that where Spes’s fingers cross out of the dark rectangle that would contain her, Christ’s fingertips actually disappear out of the frame. To put it another way, Spes’s fingers cross over the frame, but Christ’s seem to be hidden beneath the frame. As Claudio Bellinati understands it, ‘Le mani del Cristo già fuoriescono dalla sfera dello spazio e del tempo, cui tendono le schiere di beati e di angeli, in mistico rapimento.’⁶⁰ The gesture is amplified by the blessed closest to Christ echoing the reaching gesture from both sides. ⁶⁰ ‘Christ’s hands already seem to be exiting the realm of time and space, towards that space where the blessed and the angels tend with mystical ecstasy.’ Bellinati, Giotto, p. 122.

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This combined gesturality of loving and hopeful extension upward can, at the same time, be contrasted with the kinesic signals of a set of figures among the vices, Desperatio, Inconstantia, and Stultitia. Stultitia reaches vaguely outward, while it is his club that points upward even as it tends threateningly towards his own head, in a mockery of the uprightness of the Virtues. Desperatio and Inconstantia are more serious counterpoints to the gestures of Karitas and Spes and merit closer consideration. Desperatio and Spes are opposing frames to the Last Judgement, and are very much composed as gestural opposites. Against Spes’s lightness and extension, Desperatio is limp, with hanging head and hanging arms, dangling from the cord she has used to end her life (Figure 4.8). Her feet hang vertically beneath her. Her fingers are clenched in fists, recalling both Invidia’s tight-fisted clutching of her money bag and Ira’s fists grasping at her clothes to tear them from her chest.

Figure 4.8 Giotto, Desperatio, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

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Figure 4.9 Giotto, Inconstantia, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Public domain.

Inconstantia (Figure 4.9), who is opposed to Fortitudo in Giotto’s programme,⁶¹ is—perhaps rather than a gestural opposition—a gestural parody of Spes. She too floats, as one arm, fingers gently curved but unreaching, grasping, extends all the way up from her shoulder. But that extension tends towards nothing at all. While Spes and Karitas extend themselves in ways constructed reciprocally with the figures of God and Christ who receive or offer, Inconstantia extends herself vaguely into the void. The right arm directed upward is unevenly balanced by the left arm that hangs behind, palm facing downward. Both knees bend, and Inconstantia floats in a disorienting fashion, with her feet positioned as if she were about to sit on an invisible chair. But she is instead doubly levitating upon two unstable surfaces, a wheel, and the floor ⁶¹ See Pisani, ‘La concezione’, p. 220.

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beneath, that, unlike the square faux marble frames of the other figures, is a brightly coloured marble surface, displaying reds, purples, and whites in swirls and blotches, rising unevenly on both sides to disrupt the straight coordinates of the white marble faux frame. Her clothing, as well, floats up behind her. There is a parallel to be noted, I would suggest, between Inconstantia’s uneven lightness, as presented in contrast to the directed levitation in the figure of Spes, and Dante’s depiction of the Infernal lustful. It has often been noted that Dante’s lustful are not treated like Giotto’s lustful in the Last Judgement.⁶² In Giotto’s depiction, the lustful are tortured in ways that centre on the genitals and on the sexual act.⁶³ Dante’s depiction, by contrast, focuses entirely on the lightness of the lustful; Francesca and Paolo ‘paion sì al vento esser leggieri’ (‘look to be so light upon the wind’, Inf. 5, 75). Landino comments: ‘eran più veloci, perché erano più tirati dal vento, cioè avevano maggior pena’.⁶⁴ In other words, their sin, that of not resisting their passion, is great and therefore their punishment is great as well. Their lightness, or swiftness in the wind, corresponds to the degree to which ‘la ragion sommettono al talento’ (‘made reason bow to their instinctual bent’, Inf. 5, 39). It is precisely this sort of undirected lightness, I would suggest, that we see in Giotto’s figure of Inconstantia. Giotto’s Karitas reaches upward in a directed fashion, towards God. Inconstantia, like the sinners of Inferno 5, reaches in a haphazard way, without direction. Taken together, this gestural panorama of the valences of reaching between Dante’s text, visual texts that elaborate the Commedia, and visual texts that coexist with the Commedia enhances our ability to read the penances of Dante’s Purgatorio and the punishments of his Inferno. Each gesture is dense with correlations between other gestures, and each has a kinesic range that may be best appreciated through visual or somatic elaboration of their temporalities and various instantiations. Penance is a process, and fully entering into the implications of the text demands illustration, visualization, or enactment.

⁶² See Teodolinda Barolini, ‘Dante’s Sympathy for the Other or the Non-Stereotyping Imaginations: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia’ in L’Italia allo specchio: Linguaggi e identità italiane nel mondo, ed. Fabio Finotti and Marina Johnston (Venice: Marsilio, 2014), pp. 9–39. ⁶³ See Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, The Usurer’s Heart: Giotto, Enrico Scrovegni, and the Arena Chapel in Padua (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), p. 66. ⁶⁴ ‘They were faster, because they were more pulled by the wind, that is, they had a greater punishment.’ See also Chiavacci Leonardi, p. 151.

5 Asymmetrical Affections If gestural encounter in Purgatorio tends towards reciprocities and mirrorings, things are complicated significantly in Paradiso, where encounters cannot but elaborate asymmetries. Dante, as living human, is consistently staged not as a temporary member of the group he meets, as he is in Purgatorio, but rather as one individual encountering a group that has a mode of being that is incommensurable with his own. The choreographies of these encounters hinge on divergence not only in qualities of knowledge between Dante and the blessed, but also, and perhaps above all, in qualities of affetto, affect.¹ Given the large body of ‘affect theory’ that has developed from the end of the twentieth century and through to the present moment, it might seem hazardous to translate Dante’s ‘affetto’ with the particularly loaded term that is ‘affect’. But, as I intimated in the discussion of affective communities as formed by Dante’s Vita nova onward, Dante’s use of ‘affetto’, most often a shape of desire or the state of being drawn in a certain way towards someone or something, has enough in common with today’s discourses of affect as a term that intentionally places emphasis on the relationship with that towards which the subject is drawn.² As I will seek to show in this chapter, Dante’s Paradiso offers a fully formed theory of affetto that chimes with crucial aspects of our contemporary theoretical elucidations of affect and therefore may be effectively translated as affect rather than ‘affection’, its more obvious modern linguistic correlate.³ As we shall see, Dante’s elucidation of affective difference as the primary difference between the living and the blessed is visualized through gestural means.

¹ Two important studies on ‘affetto’ in Dante are Fortunato Trione’s book La Poetica dell’A ffetto: Estetica religiosa nella Divina Commedia (Ravenna: Longo, 2017), and Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Dottrina degli affetti e teologia: La rappresentazione della beatitudine nel Paradiso’ in Dante poeta cristiano e la cultura religiosa medievale: In ricordo di Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Ravenna, 28 novembre 2015, ed. Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro dantesco dei Frati minori conventuali, 2018), pp. 259–312. ² See Chapter 3 for discussion of this issue in terms of affective communities. ³ See McNamer, Affective Meditation; Dale Coulter and Amos Yong (eds.), The Spirit, the Affections, and the Christian Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), and Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds.), The Affect Theory Reader, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Dante, Artist of Gesture. Heather Webb, Oxford University Press. © Heather Webb (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.003.0006

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Dante constructs the meaning of the term in his poem slowly at first. ‘Affetto’ as a term appears only once in Inferno (5, 125) and four times in Purgatorio, most critically in Canto 25 to describe the formation of the shade as formed by affetti, ‘secondo che ci affliggono i disiri / e li altri affetti, l’ombra si figura’ (106–7)⁴. We may translate this literally as ‘in correspondence with the way in which we are afflicted by our desires and our other affects, the shade is configured’. ‘Affetto’ in Dante has a broad range of meanings, and while here, ‘affetti’ is placed alongside ‘disiri’ (‘desires’), sometimes ‘affetto’ can be understood as fully synonymous with desires. In this case, it is construed as close to desires, but occupying a broader semantic space; ‘affetto’ in the singular and ‘affetti’ in the plural can refer to impulses, passions, appetites, the will, the movements of the soul, as well as taking on the modern sense of benevolent feelings towards someone or even love.⁵ Here, in the crucial description of the mechanisms of the afterlife, we come to understand desires as well as the broader matter of ‘affetti’ as the vectors that shape the aerial bodies into the forms that Dante sees on his journey. And it is those shapes that allow the souls to engage in punishment, or penance, or blessedness. If, in life, we are already constituted by our ‘affetti’, in the afterlife, those ‘affetti’ become eminently visible. Thus Forese Donati, Dante’s old friend, does not appear with the same visage as he did in life, and Dante cannot recognize his face, but his appearance is instead emaciated as a visualization of his exaggerated grasping impulse towards food. In Dante, ‘affetto’ may be distinguished from ‘intelletto’, but such distinctions should not allow us to think the two powers of the soul as operating independently of one other; they are often compared to the two feet of a human body, not necessarily perfectly equal, but intended to work together.⁶ Naturally, there was, in Dante’s time, debate as to whether one might attain to divine vision by means of affect or intellect and Dante makes use of concepts and terminology from those understood to be the primary voices in such debates, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure.⁷ But while Dante makes liberal use of conceptualizations of affect and

⁴ The other occurrences are at Purg. 2, 77; 18, 57; 19, 62. ⁵ See, on this point, Domenico Consoli’s entry on ‘Affetto’ in Enciclopedia dantesca, available at: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/affetto_%28Enciclopedia-Dantesca%29/. ⁶ See, for example, Albertus Magnus, Postilla super Isaiam, XXV.6, in Opera Omnia, ed. Ferdinand Siepmann (Mu¨nster: Monasterii Westfalorum, 1952), vol. 19, p. 371. For further discussion of medieval notions of the feet of the soul as affect and intellect, see John Freccero, ‘The Firm Foot on a Journey Without a Guide’ in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff (London: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 29–54. ⁷ Trione examines Dante’s use of Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas in La Poetica dell’A ffetto, while Barański focuses on Bonaventure versus Aquinas and the affect/intellect debate in ‘Dottrina degli affetti e teologia’.

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intellect deriving from Bernard, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and others, ultimately, what he does in his poem is fully his own. His poem does not intend to align itself with either intellectualist or voluntarist camps.⁸ He seeks to show how affect and intellect function in conjoined ways, working towards the same ends. ‘Affetto’ becomes, I would suggest, one of the most crucial terms in the Paradiso, in which it appears twenty-one times, as against that single appearance in Inferno and those four appearances in Purgatorio. Dante’s ‘affetto’ may be, to some extent, glossed by medieval debates on affectus, but it is crucial to see how he fully theorizes the term within the economy of the Paradiso, without assuming that his ‘affetto’ takes precisely the same shape that it does in Aquinas, Bernard, or Bonaventure. It is, I will seek to show in this chapter, an embodied concept that must be read gesturally. Theorists of affect in the present day have, like the medieval theologians, discussed oppositions between affect and cognition. The contemporary debates have worried about the degree to which bodily affect ought to be or can be opposed to emotion or cognition.⁹ Both of these debates, medieval and contemporary, have at times sought to draw lines between the cognitive and precognitive, between the body and the mind. Just as it is difficult and ultimately unhelpful to draw lines between intentional gesture and bodily symptom in Dante’s work, particularly if seeking to distinguish between what is ‘merely’ bodily and what instead is ‘consciously produced’, it is also difficult and ultimately unhelpful to draw oppositions between the workings of affect on the side of the bodily as somehow separable from intellect or cognition in Dante’s thought.¹⁰ For Dante, it is impossible to conceive of existence in this life, or the next, without embodiment and bodily affective vulnerabilities. It is impossible to conceive of relations, even that most primary relationship with the divine, without bodies that enact those relations, that expose their state of being affected. It is for this reason that Dante goes to such lengths to delineate the existence and the workings of the shades or aerial bodies as shapes of affect. In this way, affective atmospheres in the three realms are rendered visible; they are shared and lived through the shapes and the responsive kinesis of shades as temporary stand-ins for those fleshly bodies that will return at the end of time.¹¹ ⁸ Barański argues, after a full review of both camps and Dante’s potential engagement with both, that his intention is to critique both camps, see ‘Dottrina degli affetti e teologia’. ⁹ See Houen, Introduction to Affect and Literature, pp. 1–30. ¹⁰ See discussion in Chapter 1. ¹¹ Lauren Berlant notes that ‘affective atmospheres’ are ‘shared, not solitary’ and are lived through the body. See Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), p. 15.

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Between stumbling feet and a burning smile Paradiso 15 offers an intersection between modalities of linguistic and bodily expression, where the divergence between Dante and his interlocutors is expressly understood to be one of affect. Here, in the heaven of Mars, amongst those who died fighting for the faith, the question of diversity in affect between a living human and a blessed soul is unfolded and staged in choreographic terms. A soul comes forth towards Dante, described as follows: Sì pia l’ombra d’Anchise si porse, se fede merta nostra maggior musa, quando in Eliso del figlio s’accorse. (Par. 15, 25–7)¹²

The first perceptible mode of diegetic communication in this immensely important encounter occurs through the language of gesture, as the soul reaches out with devotion towards Dante. The soul’s gesture here, ‘sì pia […] si porse’, is described not in its physical detail, but by means of a simile that evokes both the familiar and the strange. We have all witnessed a father reaching out towards his son, but the paternal gesture is here cast as similar to the way in which a specific father, Anchises, once reached out in the afterlife to the extraordinary presence of his living child before him. It is a gesture mediated through language proffered directly and through language latent in the form of intertext. It is a gesture that readers can visualize and interpret only by reference to the Aeneid. Dante asserts once again the existence of a community of readers with a knowledge of, and indeed faith in, Virgil’s Aeneid. The text is set up continuously as a sort of pretext for the Commedia, one that will, in this case, serve to show the reader what this specific paternal joy and devotion beyond death looks like.¹³ The gesture, described in physical detail in the Latin pre-text, ‘Isque ubi tendentem adversum per gramina vidit / Aenean, alacris palmas utrasque tetendit, / effusaeque genis lacrimae et vox excidit ore’ (Virgil, Aen. VI, 684–6), can be referenced in the text of the Paradiso in vernacular shorthand, as that gesture ¹² ‘So, too, the shadow of Anchises showed / (if we give credit to our greatest muse), / seeing his son approach him in Elysium.’ ¹³ Giorgio Inglese notes that ‘faith’ in this context is due to poetry’s capacity to represent the world of affects, ‘il mondo degli affetti’. See note on Par. 15, 25–7, pp. 200–1. On Dante’s use of Virgil, see Peter S. Hawkins, ‘For the Record: Rewriting Virgil in the Commedia’, Studies in the Literary Imagination, 36.1 (2003): 75–97.

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has itself become language, codified with ready affective meaning, thanks to its appearance in durable, perhaps even eternal, poetry.¹⁴ The soul who, through the latent supplement of the Aeneid, can be read as paternally inclined, then bursts forth in Latin that is both patently Virgil’s and patently biblical, intermingling praise of God with acclamation of Dante, leaving Dante at an utter loss in the face of this outpouring: O sanguis meus! o superinfusa gratia Dei! sicut tibi cui bis unquam celi ianua reclusa? (Par. 15, 28–30)

Dante does not respond, turning instead to Beatrice, ‘poscia rivolsi ala mia donna il viso, / e quinci e quindi stupefatto fui’ (32–3).¹⁵ It is at this moment that Beatrice shines forth with her smile; a stupefying statement is paired with and rendered equivalent to a stupefying gesture: ‘Ché dentro alli occhi suoi ardeva un riso / tal ch’io pensai co’ miei toccar lo fondo / della mia grazia e del mio paradiso’ (34–6).¹⁶ Beatrice’s response to Cacciaguida’s words is a visual, gestural instantiation of divine communication, and will later be described directly as ‘un cenno’ (a sign) (Par. 15, 71). Her smile, after all, speaks the language of the Trinity, speaks one aspect of the Trinity’s very mode of being as Dante describes it at the end of his poem:¹⁷ O luce etterna, che sola in te sidi sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta e intendente te ami e arridi (Par. 33.124–6)¹⁸ ¹⁴ ‘And as he saw Aeneas coming towards him over the sward, he eagerly stretched forth both hands’ Cited from Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, Appendix Vergiliana, ed. Jeffrey Henderson et al., trans. Henry R. Fairclough, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999–2000), vol. 1, p. 580. On believing the matter of the Virgilian text, see also Inferno 13. ¹⁵ ‘[…] then turned again to see my lady’s countenance, / amazed at what I saw on either side.’ ¹⁶ ‘For laughter in her eyes now burned so bright / that, as I thought, I touched the very depths / of all I gloried in—and Paradise.’ ¹⁷ A number of theologians have written eloquently on Dante’s use of the ‘smile’, asserting that it is, in addition to being Dante’s signature gesture, perhaps also Dante’s most original contribution to theology. See particularly Peter S. Hawkins, ‘A ll Smiles: Poetry and Theology in Dante’s Commedia’ in Dante’s ‘Commedia’: Theology as Poetry, ed. Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2010), pp. 36–59 (p. 53). ¹⁸ ‘Eternal light, you sojourn in yourself alone. / Alone, you know yourself. Known to yourself, / you, knowing, love and smile on your own being.’

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Adding gestural charge to commonplace medieval theological depictions of the divine persons as knowing and loving one another, Dante insists further upon a ‘self-reflecting divine smile’, casting the Trinity as a community of delight.¹⁹ The smile is also crucial to Dante’s depiction of the visible particularity and the articulation of diversity of each of the souls in the Empyrean: ‘visi a carita suadi / d’altrui lume fregiati e di suo riso’ (‘faces swayed to caritas, / arrayed in their own smiles and light not theirs’, Par. 31, 49–50). These smiles in the Empyrean show forth identity as relation; being towards the other is constitutive of selfhood, here figured in the gestural language of the smile. What, then, does the intervention of Beatrice’s glorious smile enact in the context of Paradiso 15?²⁰ The smile shows forth love for Dante and joy at the fulfilment of this greeting foreshadowed in Virgil’s beloved poem. The smile speaks eloquently to gloss the surprising material of the Latin terzina. In the triangulation between Dante, Beatrice, and this paternal soul, who will be identified as Dante’s ancestor, Cacciaguida, Dante finds himself between two blessed souls, ‘beati’, who are infinitely more capable of showing forth love than he is and indeed infinitely more capable of love than he is. Dante can only perceive something of Cacciaguida’s love as mirrored in Beatrice, who takes joy in Cacciaguida’s love for Dante. And that smile of Beatrice’s is all that Dante can approach at that moment, as Cacciaguida moves from Latin to a language that Dante does not comprehend because ‘[i]l suo concetto / al segno d’i mortal si soprapuose’ (‘his thought / so set itself above the mortal mark’, Par. 15, 41–2). But what is clear is that his ‘concetto’, or meaning, is love, for Dante next tells us that ‘quando l’arco de l’ardente affetto / fu sì sfogato, che ’l parlar discese / inver’ lo segno del nostro intelletto’ (Par. 15, 43–5),²¹ Dante then begins to understand.²² It is Cacciaguida’s ‘affetto’ that renders his language unintelligible to human intellect, but what Dante can more fully perceive is Beatrice’s smile that somehow mirrors, reflects, and shows forth the content of Cacciaguida’s impenetrable speech in a more accessible way.

¹⁹ Hawkins, ‘A ll Smiles’, p. 38. ²⁰ Elina Gertsman’s warning is crucial, in this as in all other cases, that a smile can be recast in different visual contexts and transformed. It is an enormously ambiguous gesture and must always be read in context. See ‘The Facial Gesture’. ²¹ ‘And when the bow shot of his burning love / had so far settled that his speech came down / to reach the target of our intellect’. ²² On the flexibility of language here, see Elena Lombardi, ‘Plurilingualism sub specie aeternitatis and the Strategies of a Minority Author’ in Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, ed. Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati, and Ju¨rgen Trabant (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), pp. 34–51.

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The encounter with Cacciaguida has been fruitfully read against the vertically aligned encounter with another potential father figure, Brunetto Latini, in Inferno 15.²³ The choreographies of the two passages may shed light upon one another, as an extension of the reflection of asymmetries staged in the two episodes. As Cacciaguida is set up in Paradiso 15 as ‘above’ Dante, with his thought as something that ‘si soprapuose’ (‘set itself above’) mortal reach, or his speech that must ‘discende’ (descend) to be understood, so Dante is set physically above Brunetto. In the infernal encounter with Brunetto in the circle of the violent against nature, Dante’s professed respect for ‘ser Brunetto’, addressed with the ‘voi’ (Inf. 15, 30), is ironically undone by careful choreographic staging, where the poet makes repeated reference to his relative height up on the ‘argine’ as Brunetto walks beneath. Brunetto must grasp at his ‘lembo’ (hem); Dante must reach down towards him ‘chinando la mano a la sua faccia’ (‘reaching down a hand towards his face’, 29). Brunetto says ‘i’ ti verrò a’ panni’ (‘I’ll follow at your coat tails’, 40); and Dante responds that ‘io non osava scender de la strada / per andar par di lui, ma ’l capo chino / tenea com’ uom che reverente vada’ (43–5).²⁴ The various parallelisms that have been noted between these paternal episodes can be enriched by a gestural and kinesic reading of the staged asymmetries in the two encounters. In opposing choreographies, Dante is staged first as above Brunetto and then as immeasurably below Cacciaguida. But although Dante dared not descend to Brunetto’s level, Cacciaguida seeks to bring some part of his speech down to the edges of Dante’s human comprehension. In both cases, however, the asymmetries remain apparent, and this asymmetry allows for sharp examination of the role of affect. Cacciaguida’s outburst is followed by a direct appeal for Dante to respond, even in his limited understanding: ma perché ’l sacro amore in che io veglio con perpetu¨a vista, e che m’asseta ²³ See, for example, John Freccero, ‘The Eternal Image of the Father’ in In Dante’s Wake: Navigating from Medieval to Modern in the Augustinian Tradition, ed. Danielle Callegari and Melissa Swain (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), pp. 81–95; Simone Marchesi, ‘Dante’s Fatherlands’ in Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, Vol.2, ed. George Corbett and Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016), pp. 77–99; Monica Keane, ‘Teaching Brunetto Latini with Cacciaguida’, Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Culture, and Composition, 17.3 (2017): 475–84. ²⁴ ‘I did not dare to climb down the causeway / and walk with him on equal terms. But still, / as though in reference, I kept my head bowed low.’ John Freccero notes that irony emerges from the difference between the pilgrim’s perspective and that of the poet through the ‘landscape’. See ‘The Eternal Image of the Father’, p. 84.

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DANTE, ARTIST OF GESTURE di dolce disïar, s’adempia meglio, la voce tua, sicura, balda e lieta, suoni la volontà, suoni ’l disio (Par. 15, 64–6).²⁵

This is how to respond to that perfect, particular, excessive (as in ‘beyond human bounds’) love, by sounding out what is partial, an expression of desire, of will even in its weak state, even characterized by its incompleteness and inadequacy in the face of this love. Dante does not answer immediately, but turns first to Beatrice, who ‘arrisemi un cenno / che fece crescer l’ali al voler mio’ (‘smiled me such a sign / that made the wings of will in me grow strong’ (71–2). In the wake of Cacciaguida’s ardent call, Dante first must turn to Beatrice, to see her smile once more, to take that smile as a sign, to be ready to speak. Cacciaguida is too luminous for Dante to see him properly; it is Beatrice who is most visible to Dante at this point. Her ‘affetto’, visible in her smile, is needed to render Dante prepared to meet, even in the most partial way, Cacciaguida’s offer. Throughout his journey, Dante needs double prompts for his own speech, both words and signs. From the point when Virgil crowns Dante over himself in Purgatorio, telling him, ‘Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno’ (‘No longer look to me for signs or word’, Purg. 27, 139), Dante passes to dependence on Beatrice’s words and signs, parallel prompts that move him to articulate speech of another order. Dante finally responds to Cacciaguida with what amounts to an account of his human lack, of his asymmetry in this encounter: L’affetto e ’l senno come la prima equalità v’apparse, d’un peso per ciascun di voi si fenno […] Ma voglia e argomento ne’ mortali per la cagion ch’a voi è manifesta diversamente son pennuti in ali ond’io che son mortal, mi sento in questa ²⁵ ‘But (may the holy love wherein, with sight / perpetual, I watch and whence, with sweet / desire, I thirst, be all the more fulfilled!) / be confident in voice, be brave and glad / to sound your will, to sound your best desire.’

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disaguaglianza, e però non ringrazio se non col core ala paterna festa (Par. 15, 73–82)²⁶

Dante here speaks forth his inadequacy, placing all his emphasis on his human lack. ‘Affetto’ is aligned with ‘voglia’ here, and ‘senno’ with ‘argomento’. While for the blessed, affect and understanding are entirely equal, mortal humans lag in their capacity to desire or to experience affect as compared to mortal capacity for argument (as expressed in language).²⁷ Dante notes that affect is his weak wing, and that even if Beatrice’s smile has allowed that wing to grow, it will still lag behind his use of words as instrument of the intellect. The journey of the Commedia has to do with strengthening the wing of affect, or ‘voglia’. Dante has, in fact, already come a long way in this, when we consider his beginning, in the ‘piaggia diserta’ (‘lonely scree’, Inf. 1, 29). In one of Dante’s most kinesically sticky, or somatically troubling passages, he describes himself, walking ‘sì che ’l piè fermo sempre era ’l più basso’ (‘the foot that drives me always set the lower’, Inf. 1, 30), a formulation that has troubled commentators ever since. If we read the two feet as staging affect and intellect, as has been proposed,²⁸ we may detect a developing sequence of gestural iterations of asymmetries within the single body–soul complex. This initial state of asymmetry within the person is understood to be healed by the time Dante reaches the Earthly Paradise, and it is this new integrity of his personhood that leads Virgil to say that Dante has no more need of his words or gestures as guide: ‘libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, / e fallo fora non fare a suo senno. / Per ch’io te sovra te corono e mitrio’ (Purg. 27, 140–2).²⁹ But as we see, asymmetries remain crucial conveyors of meaning in the poem; they are a part of mortal existence and may be most fully staged by shifting their choreographic and conceptual parameters to the relationship between Dante and his blessed interlocutors. And it is in the face of such asymmetries that the guidance of gestures, delivered by a new set of guides, remains equally necessary. ²⁶ ‘In you, each one, / the heart was balanced equally with mind / when Primal Equipoise appeared to you […] But will and intellect in mortal minds / (for reasons that are manifest to you) / are different in the plumage of their wings. / And I discern, since I am mortal, in / myself the same unequalness. My heart / alone must thank you for your father-words.’ ²⁷ Thomas Aquinas states that the mind must move to God et per intellectum et per affectum, but the intellect is stronger in understanding than the affections in loving, so the intellect precedes and the affections follow, slowly or not at all. See Scriptum super Sententiarum IV d.xvii, q.I, a.3, sol. 3. See, for a discussion of divisions within the soul, Freccero, ‘The Firm Foot on a Journey Without a Guide’. ²⁸ See, as noted previously, Freccero’s ‘The Firm Foot on a Journey Without a Guide’. ²⁹ ‘Your will is healthy, upright, free and whole. / And not to heed that sense would be a fault. / Lord of yourself, I crown and mitre you.’

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Cacciaguida’s speech is unintelligible precisely because his affect and his knowledge have so melded that his words are not mere vehicles of reason or intellect but instead have become the means of love itself.³⁰ That incomprehensible speech does not merely point towards love in the way that human reason indicates some edge of it, but rather embodies love from a stance that is as affective as it is intellective. Cacciaguida’s elided words are incomprehensible because they do not depend upon division, distance, and distinction, as our words do, but rather are words that enact presence in the divine love, in the thirst for sweet desire. In the face of their incomprehensibility, we are left with the visible gestural vectors that converge on Dante; Cacciaguida’s paternal reaching, accompanied by Beatrice’s smile. These gestural traces of the fullness of affect are, for the mortal human, as much as one can perceive. In Dante’s encounter with Adam in Paradiso 26, ‘affetti’ are visibly communicated: Talvolta un animal coverto broglia, sì che l’affetto convien che si paia per lo seguir che face a lui la ’nvoglia; e similmente l’anima primaia mi facea trasparer per la coverta quant’ella a compiacermi venìa gaia. (Par. 26, 97–102)³¹

That ‘mi facea trasparer’ (‘made me see clearly’) suggests the mutual nature of gesturality; Adam displays his affective shape through his enveloping luminosity and Dante must be properly receptive to that display. Dante notes in the De vulgari eloquentia that animals can understand each other due to the similarity between their own actions and feelings and those ³⁰ This incomprehensibility must be contrasted with the incomprehensibility of Nimrod. As Irène Rosier-Catach and Bettina Lindorfer note, it is perhaps due to his utter isolation, his being without community. Cacciaguida’s incomprehensibility is rather due to his union with God. See Irène RosierCatach, ‘Man as a Speaking and Political Animal: A Political Reading of Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia’ in Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, ed. Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati, and Ju¨rgen Trabant (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 34–51 (p. 46); Bettina Lindorfer, ‘Language as a Mirror of the Soul: Guilt and Punishment in Dante’s Concept of Language’ in Dante’s Plurilingualism, pp. 122–32 (pp. 124–6). ³¹ ‘A beast will sometimes wriggle in a sack, / and so display the feelings that it has / from how the wrapping follows what it does. / In that same way, the first of human souls / made me see clearly, through his covering, / how light of heart he was to meet my will.’ On connected questions of language across the cantos numbered 26, see Elena Lombardi, ‘The Poetics of Trespassing’ in Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, Vol. 3, ed. George Corbett and Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017), pp. 71–88, as well as her ‘Identità lirica e piacere linguistico: una lettura di Paradiso XXVI’, Studi danteschi, 82 (2017), 65–78.

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of others of their species,³² while in the human realm, ratio is so divergent in each individual that it is as if each human were a species unto themselves. One cannot thus interpolate one’s own actions or feelings onto another to interpret the meaning of an action. The Commedia provides examples of the pervasive potential for misinterpretation, such as Ugolino’s sons, who misinterpret his silent biting of his hands as hunger, or Statius who misreads Dante’s smile when Virgil is named.³³ Adam’s gestures instead represent a total communicability of actions without any risk of misinterpretation; these actions take place in a realm in which there exists a union of desires. When intentions are aligned in love, another’s affect can be read in light of one’s own response. If we think of affects as modern theorizations invite us to, as a web of relations in which each of us is entirely caught up, linking us to those around us, we may see this web as if rendered visible in the weft of light surrounding Adam’s expressive soul. Each articulation of Adam’s appearance emphasizes this divinely transparent gesturality as a sensible manifestation of loving joy. Beatrice first singles him out as ‘Dentro da quei rai / vagheggia il suo fattor l’anima prima / che la prima Virtù creasse mai’ (Par. 26, 82–4)³⁴; Adam elaborates: ‘I s’appellava in terra il sommo Bene / onde vien la letizia che mi fascia’ (134–5)³⁵. The ‘fascia’ within which Adam moves in his devotion gestures to that ‘vagheggiare’ that the first-created mutually exchanges with his Creator, and likewise moves to show joy in meeting Dante’s desire.³⁶ All of this extra-conceptual language on display in Paradiso, in its gestural and supplicatory forms, speaks affection, desire, praise, and above all, joy. Dante must, and can only, admit and repeatedly perform his disaguaglianza, his radical asymmetry from his blessed interlocutors. I will suggest in what follows that an immensely perceptive reading of Dante’s disaguaglianza in Paradise is available to us in Sandro Botticelli’s illustrations. The asymmetries between Dante’s personal misalignment and Beatrice’s capacity to see in affective unity with the community of the beati are represented in Botticelli’s drawings in the depiction of their bodily forms, the poses of which amplify depictions of affective viewing and the apprehension of the vision. As Damien Dombrowski notes, the contrast between Dante’s ‘block-like

³² This comprehension works ‘per proprios actus vel passiones’ (by their own actions and feelings), DVE I, ii. ³³ Inf. 33, 55–63; Purg. 21, 109–29. ³⁴ ‘Within those rays, / the Maker looks with love upon the first / of souls that primal power had ever formed.’ ³⁵ ‘The Highest Good—from which derives the joy / I’m swathed in here—was known on earth as “I”.’ ³⁶ On the expressive radiance of the blessed, see David Ruzicka, ‘Uno lume’, particularly pp. 10–13.

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profile’ and Beatrice’s fluid outline is particularly stark in the Paradiso drawings.³⁷ The asymmetry between Beatrice and Dante is visible in each of the drawings in the way in which Beatrice is dynamically inclined towards Dante. Her body displays relationality as movement, as inclination towards the other. In Adriana Cavarero’s book Inclinazioni, within the context of her discussion of Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin and Child with St Anne, Cavarero notes that it is ‘Proprio l’asimmetria, modulata sull’inclinazione, si traduce così nella messa in movimento di una relazionalità che riflette l’esperienza quotidiana del materno piuttosto che la monumentalità del sacro’.³⁸ Dante’s Paradiso casts this mode of inclination rather than monumentality as not only maternal, but also paternal and in fact not only indebted to families in the strict sense. Such asymmetry is the predominant mode of relation between the beati and Dante. In this paternal instance, Cacciaguida’s intense affection that derives from seeing in God is figured in the asymmetry between his burning gesture (both that ‘si porse’, the reaching out, and the glow of loving, incomprehensible words) and Dante’s response. Botticelli, in fact, illustrates this encounter by showing us Dante recoiling and attempting to cover his face. But the astonishing and wondrous thing to note here is that the ‘disaguaglianza’, once noted and acknowledged, is no barrier to carrying on. Dante must, in the face of this incommensurable affection, give thanks from his heart for that paternal celebration that has been offered. In other words, he must respond with affection himself, even if he has just stated that it is in this area that mortals are lacking. To return to the triangulation in the encounter with Cacciaguida, and the way in which Dante stages the need for Beatrice’s presence and visible smile to mediate his ancestor’s affection and to allow him to respond in his limited way to that affection, I would like to consider the ways in which mediating gestures of asymmetrical affect in the Commedia allow Dante to experience Paradiso. Those mediations, figured in acknowledgement of asymmetries, make space not only for Dante, but also for the reader to enter into the devotional affective modes of the poem via existing practices of participatory viewing. The Egerton 943 is one of the few early manuscripts to illustrate the Paradiso as well as the earlier canticles. Most early manuscripts have a tendency to focus ³⁷ Damien Dombrowski, ‘Botticelli and the Construction of the Spirit: The Dante Drawings and the Limitations of Cultural History’ in Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy, ed. Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000), pp. 298–305 (p. 302). ³⁸ On Leonardo’s Sant’Anna painting: ‘precisely asymmetry, modulated through the inclination of bodies, that translates into the terms of movement a relationality that reflects the quotidian experience of the maternal rather than the monumentality of the sacred.’ Cavarero, Inclinazioni, p. 137.

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their illustrations in the first canticle and abandon illustration entirely when it comes to the third.³⁹ The Egerton’s Commedia’s programme of illustration instead embraces the representational difficulties of the canticle, opting to deal with mediations and asymmetries in the very structure of the illustrations. In Paradiso, Dante and Beatrice are consistently depicted outside of a semicircle formed of lighter to darker layers of blue containing the blessed souls until the moment when Dante ascends Jacob’s ladder to the heaven of the fixed stars. In f. 166r, Dante ascends the ladder but looks back at Beatrice who remains outside the semicircle. She smiles back, ever so gently tipping her head towards him, and from this point on, Dante and Beatrice are depicted within the circle, together with the blessed souls. Further distinctions are then at times introduced within the space of the semicircle, sometimes simply marked out by vertical placement (Dante and Beatrice appear at the bottom) and at other times further divisions are introduced into the interior space itself, such as circular, mandorla-type framings for the Virgin Mary and the vision of a Christoform God. The Egerton 943 illustrations often divide Dante and his guides from the souls they encounter in each of the canticles. In the illustrations for the Inferno, many of the damned are set off from the space where Dante and Virgil stand by their position within a frame that is at first presented as a jagged boundary or, from the circle of the violent on, an architectural arch that might be that of a portico.⁴⁰ In Purgatorio, the rocky landscape of the mountain often forms a natural distinction between Dante and Virgil on one side and the souls he encounters on the other. But the illustrations of Paradiso are the ones that most consistently seem to set themselves the task of showing levels of difference. While Dante and Beatrice are usually within the same space, Beatrice is frequently shown in a mediating role between the space that Dante occupies and the space of the blessed. Sometimes she is placed between Dante and the semicircle, with her hands gesturing in a way that visibly bridges Dante’s position and that of the blessed. Other times, Dante is nearer to the blessed souls than his guide, but looks back at Beatrice, whose gesture on these occasions leads the eye back to the semicircle of the blessed. In most cases, the relationship between Dante and Beatrice is foregrounded as mediating the encounter with other souls, either through careful direction of the gaze or through hand gestures. The illustrator of the Egerton Commedia is most concerned with ³⁹ For a complete list, see Pegoretti, Indagine, pp. 121–2. ⁴⁰ On the divisions in the illustrations of the three realms, see Pegoretti, Indagine, pp. 125–6. That these structures might aid in the memorability of the text, see Yates, The Art of Memory. See also Battaglia Ricci, ‘Per una lettura dell’Inferno’, pp. 245ff.

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showing Dante’s divergence from the blessed, while Beatrice is, until Bernard’s appearance in f. 181v, kept close to Dante. By contrast, Sandro Botticelli’s Paradiso illustrations show Beatrice’s gestural and bodily modes as incommensurable with Dante’s, even as, or perhaps because they are, animated by the most visible affection.

Botticelli’s illustrations of Dante’s Paradiso: A paradise of gesture alone Botticelli’s Commedia illustrations offer potent gestural readings across the three canticles, but it is for the Paradiso that gestures come to fully dominate the visual narration.⁴¹ Botticelli’s remediations often wilfully take their own particular path with respect to the existing tradition of illustrating the Commedia.⁴² This particularity becomes most apparent when Botticelli turns to the Paradiso. Many illustrators of that canticle choose to illustrate myths and mythological figures referenced in the Paradiso, such as Giovanni di Paolo, illustrator of the Paradiso canticle in the Yates Thompson 36 of the British Library (1438–44). In the miniature for Canto 1, for example, Giovanni has inserted Marsyas, Apollo, and Parnassus into the scene with Dante, while in Dante’s text, Marsyas, Apollo, and Parnassus are referenced in Paradiso 1, not described as present.⁴³ Botticelli, instead, tends to depict only Dante, Beatrice, and a minimal selection of what Dante describes as having directly experienced throughout his Paradiso, as is immediately evident when his version of Canto 1 is compared to Giovanni di Paolo’s. Botticelli’s Paradiso drawings are notable for their absences, not only with respect to Dante’s vast range of reference, as we have seen, but also in terms of those few iconic images that are depicted as immediately visible to the voyaging Dante in the realm, such as the cross in the heaven of Mars or the ⁴¹ For background on Botticelli’s illustrations, see Chapter 4. I explored some of this material to different ends in my article, ‘Botticelli’s Illustrations of Dante’s Paradiso: The Construction of Conjoined Vision’, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 22.2 (2019): 187–208. ⁴² The Inferno illustrations, which have been scrutinized the most fully by Dante scholars, show ‘astonishing familiarity’ with the poem, as Deborah Parker puts it, 90. On Botticelli as a reader of Dante, see Deborah Parker, ‘Illuminating Botticelli’s Chart of Hell’, MLN, 128 (2013): 84–102; Cornelia Klettke, ‘Mistica del Paradiso al limite del non rappresentabile, Par. XXX: Word-Painting dantesco e disegno botticelliano—analisi di un intercambio mediale’, Quaderns d’Italià, 17 (2012): 113–47; Max C. Marmor, ‘From Purgatory to the Primavera: Some Observations on Botticelli and Dante’, Artibus et Historiae, 24.48 (2003): 199–212. ⁴³ These illustrations fulfil a function outlined by Sylvia Huot in another context: highlighting important images while not directly fulfilling a narrative function. See Sylvia Huot, ‘Visualization and Memory: The Illustration of Troubadour Lyric in a Thirteenth-Century Manuscript’, Gesta, 31.1 (1992): 3–14.

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eagle in the heaven of Jupiter. While it is possible simply to assume that the Paradiso drawings are the most incomplete of a series of illustrations in a ‘wide variety of degrees of completion’, from fully coloured pictures to faint preliminary sketches,⁴⁴ it may be more productive to consider what we do have available to us.⁴⁵ Botticelli’s ‘figurative commentary’, as Schulze Altcappenberg calls it, works by means of ‘a variety of rhythmical schemes and relations between figures and space, sequences of movement, eloquent gestures and facial expressions’.⁴⁶ It is, in fact, facial expressions and gestures that Botticelli has chosen to feature in his drawings. Whether or not he might have intended to return one day to these illustrations to add detail, it is clear that Botticelli’s reading leads him to begin with what he understands as central: interactive gesture that stages asymmetrical affect. In the condensed rhythm of Botticelli’s illustrations of Paradiso, Beatrice’s gestures and postures dominate the canticle in juxtaposition with Dante’s visibly inadequate responses. If we compare the size of the figures for the Paradiso illustrations with the size of the figures in the densely populated Inferno or Purgatorio illustrations, we can track Botticelli’s desire to zoom in on Beatrice’s bodily gestures and facial expressions as the narrative arc. Moving beyond the continuous narration mode of the Inferno and Purgatorio illustrations, Botticelli changes scale for this canticle, allowing the viewer to perceive and react to the subtleties of gaze and gesture. Sally Korman has suggested that the drawings ‘open up the narrative to an active, almost spiritual mode of reading. In a sense, they function as memoryimages in the manner recommended by Savonarola: by “reminding” us of significant moments in the text, they act as the catalyst for a personal meditation on Dante’s journey.’⁴⁷ But what sort of reminders would these be? We are not being reminded of the ‘events’ of Paradiso, such as they are, or even of the imagery. What is understood to form the basis of our meditation? As the subject matter of the illustrations reveal, each significant moment of the Paradiso for Botticelli is relational exchange in the dyad Dante–Beatrice or the

⁴⁴ Schulze Altcappenberg, ‘per essere persona sofistica’, p. 19. ⁴⁵ From Condivi to Vasari to the present day, we have a line of thinking for Michelangelo that alludes to the non-finito as a gesture towards a sublime idea that lies outside the reach of human hands. I am suggesting that we might take a similar line for thinking through absences in Botticelli’s illustrations. For a thorough discussion of understandings of the non-finito in Michelangelo, see Juergen Schulz, ‘Michelangelo’s Unfinished Works’, Art Bulletin, 58 (1975): 366–73. ⁴⁶ Schulze Altcappenberg, ‘per essere persona sofistica’, pp. 32–4. ⁴⁷ Sally Korman, ‘Reviews of exhibitions, Sandro Botticelli: Pittore della Divina Commedia’, Renaissance Studies, 15 (2001): 538–44 (p. 541). Korman, also notes that varying levels of finish in different areas of each drawing show Botticelli’s attention to gesture and expression, while other areas are only sketched in or indeed left out.

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triad Dante–Beatrice–viewer. Botticelli focuses on the careful elaboration of gestural encounters between Dante and Beatrice, encounters that often include the viewer of the illustration, whether implicitly or explicitly. The illustrations of the Paradiso impel us, as observers, to adjust our modes of engaging with the illustrations as they have been established for the previous two canticles, and to alter our perception of our relationship to both text and image. The images urge the reader-viewer towards a more active, affective, and spiritual mode of engagement than that employed for the Inferno and Purgatorio, in which the sheer quantity and directness of narration allow the viewer of Botticelli’s illustrations simply to follow along with the stream of events. Dante’s text sets up the character Dante as a mediator of the narrated experience, focusing on his reaction to what he sees as a model for our own immersive reading of the text. Many of Dante’s body states and gestures as described in the poem relate to attentiveness: actions like turning, looking, pausing, pointing, and stopping.⁴⁸ This is true throughout Dante’s Commedia and is a trait that Botticelli shows extensively in his remediation. But this modelling of the shared physicality of attention becomes all the more central in the Paradiso, where both text and illustration frequently admit the impossibility of showing what Dante sees, and focus instead on Beatrice’s gestures of showing and Dante’s gestures and expressions of attempted or successful witnessing. Korman notes that Botticelli’s Paradiso illustrations deliberately underscore Dante’s response to what he sees rather than the thing viewed, setting him up as an ‘intermediary whose gestures and gazes frame the experience of Paradise for the viewer’.⁴⁹ At the opening of Paradiso 2, readers are made uneasy when Dante suggests sorting them into ‘voi che siete in piccioletta barca’ (‘You in that little boat’, 1) and ‘Voialtri pochi che drizzaste il collo / per tempo al pan de li angeli’ (‘You other few who have already stretched, / straight-necked, through time to reach for angel-bread’, 10–11), explaining that only the latter group should continue following his recounted journey. Of course, the critical discussion of this passage has been immense, as scholars have wondered for centuries what the necessary characteristics are for readers who might wish to continue.⁵⁰ I will not rehearse those discussions here, but will simply, for the purposes of the present analysis, note that the first, excluded, group seems to be made up

⁴⁸ Powlesland, First Person Participation, pp. 114 and 124. ⁴⁹ Korman, ‘Sandro Botticelli’, p. 542. ⁵⁰ See the opening of Chapter 4, ‘Independence and the Reader of the Paradiso’, in Robin Kirkpatrick, Dante’s Paradiso and the Limitations of Modern Criticism: A Study of Style and Poetic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 108–29, particularly pp. 108–14.

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of passive listeners, simply ‘desiderosi d’ascoltar’ (‘listening hard, / […] from desire to hear’, 2). A gestural reading of the second group, straining their necks towards the bread of angels, suggests an active reaching towards knowledge, an intellective, spiritual, and affective engagement with the canticle that follows. If Dante thus may be understood to be nudging readers to focus on their own response and agentiality as he brings them along from Purgatorio to Paradiso, I would then suggest that Botticelli’s reading takes this transfer of responsibility even further by effectively leaving out the visions of Paradiso and showing us the act of viewing instead. Dante’s ideal readers of the Paradiso are likely to be readers who will also supplement their reading with prayer and meditation.⁵¹ Botticelli’s drawings could offer, as Korman suggests, specific, textually prompted, opportunities for such meditation, beginning with the shift in modes that occurs between Purgatorio 33 and Paradiso 1. It is crucial to note that Botticelli’s Paradiso illustrations do not offer the usual ‘objects’ of meditation, like the visage of a well-known saint featured in Paradiso. Instead, each dynamic kinetic exchange mediated by Beatrice becomes an opportunity for meditation. Given Beatrice’s prominence in these drawings, it becomes all the more striking when her gaze seems to fall upon the viewer. Her gazing face and gesturing body thwart our intention to spectate by drawing us inexorably into the dynamics of the Paradiso. If we look, for example, at the illustration of Paradiso 20 (Figure 5.1),⁵² we may note that Botticelli shows us only Beatrice and Dante in his illustration of this canto. The more expected solution for an illustration of the heaven of Jupiter might be the one that we see in the Yates Thompson 36, in which the eagle dominates the scene. But Botticelli opts for an entirely different solution. Even if he intended to return to this illustration to add an eagle, the centrality and the size of the figures of Dante and Beatrice show clearly that their interaction is what holds Botticelli’s interest, and not the pictorial challenge of an eagle comprised of blessed souls.⁵³ As Dagmar Korbacher writes, ‘Beatrice not only delights Dante but also the viewer with the hint of a tender smile’, citing a reference to the thirteenth verse of the canto, ‘O dolce amor che di riso t’ammanti’ (‘Love, which in laughter sweetly clothes itself ’).⁵⁴ ⁵¹ See Helena Phillips-Robins, ‘“Cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce”: Singing and Community in the Commedia’, Italian Studies, 71 (2016): 4–20. ⁵² Another example of this may be seen in the illustration for Paradiso 13. But see also Phlegyas in Inferno 8 and 9 (cf. Schulze Altcappenberg, ‘per essere persona sofistica’). ⁵³ The Egerton MS 943 in the British Library, f. 160 gives equal space in the illustration of this episode to the eagle’s head made up of human heads on the right and Dante and Beatrice on the left. Dante and Beatrice do not interact, but both gaze upon the eagle. ⁵⁴ Dagmar Korbacher (ed.), Botticelli and the Treasures from the Hamilton Collection (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016), p. 138.

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Figure 5.1 Botticelli, Paradiso Canto 20. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

Of course, in Dante’s text, that line refers to the ‘vive luci’ (‘lights, so vividly alive’, Par. 20, 10) of the eagle, not to Beatrice. Botticelli has condensed all of the affective and devotional material of Dante’s exchange with the multitude of souls that comprise the eagle into one exceptionally dense gestural encounter between Beatrice, Dante, and the viewer. In 2016, London’s Courtauld Gallery show of Botticelli’s illustrations of the Commedia directed viewers of the Paradiso 20 illustration to Botticelli’s painting of the Trinity with Saints Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist, the Archangel Raphael and Tobias (1491–4) in order to show the parallel between Beatrice’s figure and gaze and that of John the Baptist.⁵⁵ Like John the Baptist, Beatrice reaches out from the page with her gaze and invokes the attention of the viewer, drawing us into the vision with a gesturing hand that both indicates and includes. For Botticelli, the practice of having a figure look out from the painting was common. The practice was theorized by Leon Battista Alberti, who explains: In an istoria I like to see someone who admonishes and points out to us what is happening there; or beckons with his hand to see; or menaces with an angry ⁵⁵ Korbacher, Botticelli and the Treasures, p. 138, notes the reference to baptism in lines 127–9 of Canto 20.

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face and with flashing eyes, so that no one should come near; or shows some danger or marvellous thing there; or invites us to weep or to laugh together with them.⁵⁶

But there is also something more in the illustration of Paradiso 20 than what we see in the Trinity painting: Beatrice’s gaze enfolds both Dante and the viewer. While John the Baptist looks straight out of the canvas, Beatrice’s gaze is more complex. As Korbacher notes, she looks at Dante even as she looks at us. Beatrice’s indicating hand is already a response to Dante’s questioning hand. Apart from that indicating right hand, her body, propelled from the knee as her graceful left hand seems to just lift the folds of her clothes, turns gently. Her left foot extends delicately forward, echoing Botticelli’s Flora figure in his Primavera painting.⁵⁷ That smile and that dynamic pose position themselves between response to Dante’s linear, squared and static figure and the unrepresented vision that lies beyond them both. Beatrice’s body and face make space for the viewer, who finds themself tantalizingly placed at one corner of a geometrical figure that includes a missing point, that unrepresented vision.⁵⁸ Might we imagine that quadrant of circle beyond Beatrice’s indicating hand to be one that the viewers may, with Dante, fill with a textually prompted visualization? Furthermore, to what degree is it necessary that we imagine an eagle? The dialogue with the eagle at this point in the Paradiso concerns the inscrutability of divine justice and salvation. The form of the eagle, ‘imagine divina’ (‘sacred sign’, Par. 20, 139), made up of the luminous souls of the blessed, is meant to point towards the mystery of divine justice. Our response to that indication of a truth that exposes human short-sightedness and limitation (‘E voi mortali tenetevi stretti / a giudicar, che noi, che Dio vedemo, / non conosciamo ancor tutti gli eletti, / ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo, / perché ‘l ben nostro in questo ben s’affina’, Par. 20. 133–7)⁵⁹ must be, the text suggests, a

⁵⁶ Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 78. ⁵⁷ This echo is noted in the commentary on this drawing in Schulze Altcappenberg, ‘Paradiso’ in Sandro Botticelli, p. 256, where it is also suggested that Beatrice’s figure forms a sort of bodily response to the eagle’s message in the text. ⁵⁸ Dombrowski notes that as early as in the Chigi Madonna, Botticelli was providing his compositions with a dramatic focal point even as he incorporated future temporalities in the present. He also discusses optical communication among figures as a key feature in Botticelli’s art. See ‘Botticelli and the Construction of the Spirit’, p. 304. ⁵⁹ ‘And so you mortals, in your judgements show / restraint. For even we who look on God / do not yet know who all the chosen are. / Yet this deficiency for us is sweet. / For in this good our own good finds its goal, / that what God wills we likewise seek in will.’

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sense of loving and even joyous humility. Beatrice’s smile, in Botticelli’s depiction, is a mirrored response to that ‘dolce amor che di riso t’ammanti’ (‘Love, which in laughter sweetly clothes itself ’, Par. 20, 13).⁶⁰ The composite form of the eagle is also there to figure concord in aural, visual, and kinesic modes: E come a buon cantor buon citarista fa seguitar lo guizzo della corda, in che più di piacer lo canto acquista, sì, mentre che parlò, sì mi ricorda ch’io vidi le due luci benedette, pur come batter d’occhi si concorda, con le parole mover le fiammette. (Par. 20, 142–8)⁶¹

Evoking the pleasure in the way that a good accompanist follows the voice of a good singer, joining two differing sounds in harmonious union, Dante links this notion of intentional, focused togetherness of two musicians with the innate, unreflexive unison in the way an individual person’s two eyes blink at the same time. The double ‘come’ of concrete, earthly kinesic experiences of unison frames something that is unavailable to earthly experience: the vision of souls arrayed as if an eagle, moving together with their words as one entity speaking with a single voice.⁶² This is the other challenge of these cantos, to imagine such perfect concord. These kinesic similes, like Beatrice’s gesturing hand and smile in Botticelli’s illustration, work to invite the viewer or reader to feel part of something directly unattainable in human experience. The sort of work of active representation and active response that I am suggesting might be prompted by Botticelli’s drawing is work that is asked of the reader of Dante’s Paradiso with increasing frequency as we move through the ⁶⁰ For a recent reading of justice and concord in Paradiso 20, see Alison Cornish, ‘Music, Justice, and Violence in Paradiso 20’, Dante Studies, 134 (2016): 112–41. ⁶¹ ‘A s good guitarists with good singers make / the string vibrate in answer to the beat, / because of which the song gains more delight, / so as it spoke, as I recall to mind, / I saw the lights of those two blessed souls, / concordant as the flickering of our eyes, / move at these words the bright sparks of their flames.’ ⁶² Giorgio Inglese, in his commentary on these lines, notes that ‘il paragone offre al lettore dati d’esperienza comune su cui appoggiarsi, nella impossibilità di replicare nella propria immaginazione ciò che il viator ha visto’. See p. 268.

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canticle. Indications and gestures pointing where to look are present in the text through to the final canto: Bernardo m’accennava, e sorridea, perch’ io guardassi suso; ma io era già per me stesso tal qual ei volea. (Par. 33, 49–51)⁶³

At this point, Bernard’s indications are no longer fully necessary for Dante, as he narrates it. In the increasing alignment of desires, gestures of indication become simultaneous with the act itself.⁶⁴ Such ‘cenni’, or signs, that reinforce and indicate, perform a crucial mediating role in the text and are a frequent topos in Botticelli’s drawings. For Dante, acts of indication are crucial components of the communal practices of devotion. Seeing Christ crucified meant looking at his mother’s acts of mourning in visual art and in medieval drama. Seeing the Incarnation meant contemplation of visual representations of the Virgin as bridge between earth and heaven, with iconographic typologies that include the Virgin Hodegetria, the Virgin who gestures towards her child.⁶⁵ For Botticelli’s illustrations, this background of devotional practices of looking at others looking is layered upon the pictorial practices of istoria, drawing him to emphasize the gestural acts of indicating as readings of key moments in Dante’s Paradiso. One such moment of particular affective intensity is at the opening of Paradiso 23, which necessitates quoting at length for the density of conceptualizations of indicating: Come l’augello, in tra l’amate fronde, posato al nido de’ suoi dolci nati la notte che le cose ci nasconde, che, per veder li aspetti disiati e per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca (in che gravi labor li sono aggrati), previene il tempo in su aperta frasca e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, fiso guardando pur che l’alba nasca— così la donna mïa stava eretta e attenta, rivolta inver’ la plaga ⁶³ ‘Now Bernard, smiling, made a sign to me / that I look up. Already, though, I was, / by my own will, as he desired I be.’ ⁶⁴ See Katherine Powlesland, ‘Invitations to Participate: Bernard’s Sign’, Le tre corone, 4 (2017): 97–115. ⁶⁵ See Pasquini, Pigliare occhi, p. 202 and Jan Van Laarhoven, Storia dell’arte Cristiana (Milan: Mondadori, 1999), pp. 66–7; Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006).

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Passages such as this one show how Dante’s ability to see and respond to the experiences of his journey through Paradiso is mediated through observation of Beatrice’s bodily expression and absorption of her affect. The long simile of the mother bird awaiting the dawn that stretches from lines 1 to 9 traces a specific sense of kinesis, a posture of anticipation, of being on the verge of movement. Dante describes his state as affected by the intensity of Beatrice’s suspension and desirousness, ‘sospesa e vaga’, but at the same time already taking joy in the beauty of her desire. If the shared affective atmosphere here is one of expectation, Dante is also highly conscious of his pleasure in the sense of that shared experience. The anticipation reaches its fulfilment in Beatrice’s pronouncing of the word, ‘Ecco’, a verbal gesture of showing that is precisely the sort that Botticelli extends into visible gesture, as in his illustration of this canto, where Beatrice throws her arm upward joyously, hand thrown back at the wrist, where palm and fingers open in gracious curvature towards the lights above Dante and Beatrice.⁶⁷ Giovanni di Paolo, in his illustrations for the Yates Thompson Commedia, tends to show Beatrice’s mode of indication in Paradiso in very similar ways from one canto to another; usually she floats with one hand behind Dante, ⁶⁶ ‘Compare: a bird, among her well-loved boughs, / has rested all night long while things lie hid, / poised where her dear brood sleeps within their nest; / and then, to glimpse the looks she’s longed to see, / and find the food her fledglings feed upon / (these efforts weigh with her as pure delight) / before dawn comes she mounts an open sprig, / and there, her heart ablaze, awaits the sun, / eyes sharpening, fixed, till day is truly born. / So, too, head raised, tall, straight, my donna stood, / attention wholly on that stretch of sky / where, under noon, the sun displays least speed. / And I, to see her stand enraptured so, / became like one desiring still what he / has not—and yet in hope is satisfied. / But little time went by between these two— / I mean my waiting, and my seeing now / the skies that, brightening still, grew yet more bright. / And “Look!” said Beatrice. “Triumphing, / the soldiery of Christ, and all the yield, / brought from the orbit of the farthest spheres!”’ ⁶⁷ These are the spectacles made present to the reader in Paradiso; in Inferno we are drawn to see contrasting visions, e.g. ‘Ecco la fiera con la coda aguzza’ (Inf. 17, 1).

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as if on his back to guide him, and with her other hand indicating something before them both.⁶⁸ The indicating hand is open, sometimes with the index finger particularly extended. The gesture remains almost identical in every instance, drawing the viewer’s eye not to Beatrice, who presents as the stable element, but instead to the souls and spectacles of Paradiso that present themselves in great variety and splendour. Botticelli, by contrast, depicts Beatrice with a wide range of gestures of indication, with differing positions for her hand, wrist, elbow, and arm in each instance, taking care to establish dialogic correspondences between Beatrice’s gesture and Dante’s. These gestures are carefully calibrated elements in choreographic sequences that, along with the angle of Beatrice’s head and the swoop of her body, triangulate between the stiffness and rigid uprightness of Dante’s body and the unseen vision. To conclude these reflections on what Botticelli’s sharp focus on the gestural qualities of Dante’s Paradiso brings to light, we may turn to the illustration for Paradiso 5, in which we see what seems to be the artist’s hesitation between Beatrice’s face turned upward towards the divine light and downward towards Dante (Figure 5.2). The drawing shows the way in which the artist ‘subjected the posture of individual figures, and with it the precise moment of the narrative, to intense deliberation’, as Korbacher puts it. In what Korbacher calls a ‘strikingly dense underdrawing’, Beatrice’s face ‘originally’, in Korbacher’s judgement, or, we might say, also, points upward, as is clearly visible in the metalpoint sketch. Korbacher assumes that this original version was abandoned, but that certain elements remained incorporated into the later inked-in version, such as the ‘upward orientation’ of the gesturing hands, and the floating body. The inked-in lines would suggest emphasis on the conversation and eye contact between Dante and Beatrice. But, as Korbacher notes, the ‘elaboration of the gown […] remained as an underdrawing’.⁶⁹ Doris Oltrogge, Robert Fuchs, and Oliver Hahn maintain that all the illustrations were eventually intended to be coloured, thus obscuring any erasures or underdrawings.⁷⁰ But if we wish to consider Botticelli’s visualisation processes as reader, it is entirely productive to think of the other face of Beatrice here as a trace of Botticelli’s reflective process in action. The upturned face coexists alongside the

⁶⁸ On the theology of Giovanni di Paolo’s Paradiso illuminations, see Helena Phillips-Robins, ‘Theology through Images: Viewing and Devotion in the Yates Thompson Commedia’, Dante Studies, 138 (2020): 128–151. ⁶⁹ Korbacher, Botticelli and the Treasures, p. 134. ⁷⁰ Doris Oltrogge, Robert Fuchs, and Oliver Hahn, ‘Finito and Non finito: Drawing and Painting Techniques in Botticelli’s Divine Comedy’ in Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy, ed. Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000), pp. 334–41 (p. 338).

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Figure 5.2 Botticelli, Paradiso Canto 5. © bpk Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Philipp Allard.

downturned one, revealing two visible readings. The gesturing hands seem to reinforce this doubleness; the right hand is turned palm upward while the left faces Dante. After all, Beatrice’s double gesture and double facing, both engaged, downwardly inclined towards Dante and upwardly mobile, rapt, perfectly captures the mood of Paradiso 5. This is the canto of the ‘trasmutar sembiante’ transition (‘changing look’, 88) from the moon to Mercury, a canto that begins with Beatrice’s declaration of a love that responds in generosity to love, ‘Io veggio ben sì come già resplende / nel’intelletto tuo l’etterna luce, / che, vista, sola e sempre amore accende’ (7–9),⁷¹ and that also describes Beatrice’s face turning up but not away in that love, ‘poi si rivolse tutta disïante / a quella parte ove ’l mondo è più vivo’ (‘And then she, all desiring, turned once more / to where the universe shines liveliest’, 86–7). This is not a turning away from Dante, who shines with that same light that she sees above, but a turning with Dante, in a reconception of love that is not based on the bare reciprocity that an infernally ⁷¹ ‘A lready I see well in your own mind / the mirrored splendour of eternal light / which seen will kindle—only, always—love.’ For a reading of vision and love in this episode, see Mira Mocan, La trasparenza e il riflesso. Sull’ alta fantasia in Dante e nel pensiero medievale (Milan: Mondadori, 2007), pp. 33–56.

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entrapped Francesca might suggest.⁷² It is not an ‘Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona’ (‘Love, who no loved one pardons love’s requite’, Inf. 5, 103), but is instead a love that declares itself in its infinite power to increase as it is shared: ‘Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori’ (‘Look there! He’ll make our many loves grow more’, Par. 5, 105). Beatrice’s transmuted appearance then embraces both Dante and ‘quella parte ove ’l mondo è più vivo’ (‘where the universe shines liveliest’, Par. 5, 87). Thus the immensity of the asymmetry between heavenly and earthly loves becomes visible. There is perhaps no better way to understand what Dante posits as the fundamental disaguaglianza between living humans and the state of the beati. The mode of being of the beati renders visible what it means to be caught up in a web of affect, not singly with one individual at a time as infernal declarations might suppose, but increased by its multiplicity of foci. Botticelli’s Beatrice of Paradiso 5, even if a suspended and unfinished depiction, is a perfect vision of dynamic plural inclination, of the immense capacity of the beati to be multiply affected and affecting, to indicate and to invite.

⁷² I have discussed the notion of turning with/turning away in relation to Par. 33, 93 in Dante’s Persons. See especially p. 203.

6 Heavenly Proximities and Contagions In the previous chapter, I examined the fundamental asymmetries of affect that are staged between Dante and his heavenly interlocutors, and especially, but certainly not only, with Beatrice. In this final chapter of the present study, I would like to turn my attention instead to what Dante renders visible of the workings of the heavenly community, to see how, even in a realm where the shapes of the souls are relatively hidden, what emerges is nonetheless a protracted visualization of how individuals are subject to one another. The condition of the forms of the souls as intersubject, as mutually acting and receiving, always, in concert, provides a mode of imagining an ideal earthly community. The choral gestures of Dante’s beati depart from an understanding of how living humans interact in basic ways to imagine the exaltation of interaction in a community in which the boundaries between subjects are effectively broken down.¹ To put it another way, Paradiso becomes a space for imagining the transfer of affect and the coherent movement of groups in a situation in which the souls exist in a state of compenetration. When Dante asks Folco, perché non satisface a’ miei disii? Già non attendere’ io tua dimanda, s’i’ m’intuassi, come tu t’inmii, (Par. 9, 79–81)²

he articulates, with a dazzling array of neologisms, the idea of a new form of relation, in which the compenetration of souls still preserves their individual identities.³ The lines offer, in an extremely synthetic manner, a model of ¹ Elspeth Probyn has suggested that modern theorization of affect allows us to ‘question commonsense notions of the privacy or “integrity” of bodies through exposing the breaches in the borders between self and other evidenced by the contagiousness of “collective affects”’. ‘Writing Shame’ in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 71–90 (p. 76). ² ‘[Why, then, does not your voice] bring my desires the satisfaction due? / If I in-you-ed myself as you in-me, / I would not still await what you might ask.’ Inglese has ‘immii’, but I revert here to the Petrocchi ‘inmii’. ³ See Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, p. 256, n. 81. Dante, Artist of Gesture. Heather Webb, Oxford University Press. © Heather Webb (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192866998.003.0007

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reciprocally balanced relations, in which the agent, the undergoer, and the action are brought into union.⁴ Individual identity remains, but not in the sense of an impermeable, inviolable self. It is instead what we might call ‘interdividuality’, or, in other words, a new definition of the human person defined by relation and not by singularity.⁵ To continue our reflection on the forms that ‘affetto’ takes in the Paradiso in the context of this communion of relation, we will consider the transfer of affects more closely. As Gregg and Seigworth put it at the opening to their Affect Theory Reader, ‘affect is found in those intensities that pass body to body (human, nonhuman, part-body, and otherwise), in those resonances that circulate about, between, and sometimes stick to bodies and worlds, and in the very passages or variations between these intensities and resonances themselves’.⁶ If we have already noted, in Dante’s encounters with Beatrice, Cacciaguida, and others, that ‘affetto’ is what moves between interlocutors, here we will have occasion to mark the specific circulations and atmospheres of affect as staged in Paradiso, at times particularly in movements of shifting from one atmosphere to another. While the asymmetries of Dante’s encounters with the beati always suggest that he, and the reader by extension, are given a privileged view of a group that we cannot fully be a part of, the poetics of the Paradiso are still available to show us what that group looks like, in terms that are alternately immediate and strange. Sara Ahmed describes group formation as cohering ‘around a shared orientation towards some things as being good, treating some things and not others as the cause of delight’.⁷ In a vast gestural choreography of indications and visible responsiveness, Dante’s Paradiso articulates delight as shared response to certain indicated things in the heavenly community and a variety of opposing affects as the shared response towards earthly failings. If we ‘read for Stimmung’ as Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht suggests as a broader practice, we become aware of the ways in which the poetic fabric of the text reaches out to envelop the reader, through subtle strategies such as targeted gestural use of deictics to encourage a sense of distance, proximity, inclusion, or exclusion.⁸

⁴ See Brenda Deen Schildgen, ‘Dante’s Neologisms in the “Paradiso” and the Latin Rhetorical Tradition’, Dante Studies, 107 (1989): 101–19. ⁵ On ‘interdividuality’, see René Girard, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, and Guy Lefort, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, trans. Michael Matteer and Stephen Bann (London: Continuum, 2003). On the transhumanizing of the ‘persona’ in Paradiso, see my Dante’s Persons. ⁶ Gregg and Seigworth, ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’, p. 1. ⁷ Sara Ahmed, ‘Happy Objects’ in The Affect Theory Reader, pp. 29–51 (p. 35). ⁸ Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature, trans. Erik Butler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), p. 5.

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Establishing groups in Paradiso 9 As we have already had occasion to note in Chapter 3, Dante’s use of deictics establishes groups and modes of affective belonging. This section begins to interrogate the ways in which Dante juxtaposes politically motivated prophetic discourse with affective discourses, taking the case of Paradiso 9 as a particular site of focus.⁹ Dante locates, in cantos 8 and 9 of the Paradiso, heavy emphasis on the diversity of individuals; the true political allegiance, as he understands it, would retain all the character and intimacy of a one-to-one interaction that fully sees the individual as unique. Flawed political groupings are represented, conversely, as abject undifferentiated masses. Paradiso 9 thus constructs its notably jarring rhythm in a vertiginous alternation between tenderness and darkness, between splendour and blood-darkened waters; a beloved interlocutor is here and near, while chaos lies far below. The emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual, chosen, as individual, to be part of a choral group, is brought forth in Paradiso 9 against a refutation of genealogy and geography as delimiting or identifying factors. This emphasis requires a conceptual reorientation asserted through a language of distancing with regard to fluvial and factional demarcations far below these heavens. As spatial relations are reconfigured, here in this last canto that takes place in the heavens still touched by the earth’s shadow, we find new modes of distancing and proximity that lead to disorientation but ultimately suggest the foundation of new groups, often resulting from an ambiguous or rapidly shifting use of deictics. The canto begins by indicating an individual, ‘bella Clemenza’ (‘Lovely Clemenza’, Par. 9, 1). It is a disorienting opening, given that Canto 8 concludes with Carlo Martello’s words, Ma voi torcete ala religïone tal che fia nato a cignersi la spada, e fate re di tal ch’è da sermone; onde la traccia vostra è fuor di strada. (Par. 8, 145–8)¹⁰

⁹ On the density of prophecy in this canto and the link between prophecy and carità, see Donato Pirovano, ‘“Nel cielo del pianeta che di foco d’amor par sempre ardente”: Lettura del Canto IX del “Paradiso”’, Rivista di letteratura italiana, 27.1 (2009): 1–18 (p.18). ¹⁰ ‘But you will twist to some religious role / a man who’s borne to buckle on the sword, / and make a king of someone who should preach. / And so your track goes wholly from the road.’

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Canto 9, conversely, opens with this: Da poi che Carlo tuo, bella Clemenza, m’ebbe chiarito, mi narrò li ’nganni che ricever dovìa la sua semenza. (Par. 9, 1–3)¹¹

We are thus catapulted swiftly from the widely inclusive ‘voi’ at the end of Canto 8, a ‘voi’ that certainly includes Dante’s contemporaries and near contemporaries, a group that includes the reader, as it pertains to all of humanity, from that broadly sweeping ‘voi’ to an individualized interlocutor, the ‘bella Clemenza’.¹² If we read directly from canto to canto, the move is startling.¹³ It is a fitting opening to a canto that will shift modes of address and modes of indication suddenly, again and again. It is a canto that immediately asks us where we, as readers, are to stand in relation to the groups and atmospheres we read and how we configure ourselves in relation to the interlocutors. To stress the issue, another problem of address and kinesic display of virtue arises almost immediately, as Carlo turns towards the divine light: E già la vita di quel lume santo rivolta s’era al sol che la riempie come quel ben ch’a ogne cosa è tanto (Par. 9, 7–9)¹⁴

followed, surprisingly, by: Ahi, anime ingannate e fatture empie, che da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie! (Par. 9, 10–12)¹⁵ ¹¹ ‘Lovely Clemenza, your dearest Carlo— / once having made that clear to me—went on / to tell the treacheries his seed would face.’ ¹² Giorgio Inglese claims that this is an atemporal apostrophe to Carlo Martello’s wife, note in vol. 3, p. 126, see also Enzo Petrucci, ‘Clemenza’ in Enciclopedia dantesca, ed. Umberto Bosco, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–8), vol. 2, p. 42. ¹³ On the poetic and discursive unity between cantos 8 and 9, see Sonia Gentili, ‘L’arco di Cupido e la freccia di Aristotele: Canti VIII–IX’ in Esperimenti Danteschi. Paradiso 2010, ed. Tommaso Montorfano (Milan: Marietti, 2011), pp. 87–112. Marco Santagata has suggested a temporal gap between the two cantos. See Dante: Il romanzo della sua vita, p. 298. However, other scholars dispute this. See, for example, Giovanni Bàrberi Squarotti, ‘Fra teoria politica e politica militante: I canti di Carlo Martello (“Paradiso”, VIII–IX)’, Rivista di studi danteschi, 15.2 (2015): 225–58 (pp. 252–3, n. 53). ¹⁴ ‘The heart, already, of that holy light / had turned to meet the sun that filled it full, / that Good that is the All of all that is.’ ¹⁵ ‘You self-deceiving souls! Mere things-gone-wrong! / Twisting your hearts away from that true good, / you strain your brows direct to nothingness.’

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The interjection ‘A hi’ acts gesturally and affectively to grab the reader, puncturing the surface of the text with a sound of pain. The two terzine span a strong contrast, a total reversal of affective atmosphere from Carlo’s gentle turn towards the light of God to the pain of reaction to the gestural-spiritual portrait of those who do the opposite. These affective atmospheres are calibrated not only through the kinesic description but also through the carefully judged rhythms of the lines. The image of turning towards a light is rendered with a sense of balance and equilibrium, ‘rivolta s’era al sol che la riempie’, in two alliterative three-syllable words that frame a series of alliterative and assonant monosyllabic words.¹⁶ By contrast, the terzina beginning with ‘A hi’ is harsh, crowded, and clattering with insistent alliteration on the ‘t’ sound. As I noted in Chapter 3, the invective of Purgatorio 6 is given a gestural urgency through calls such as ‘A hi’ that are repeated as punctuation throughout. Here, the ‘A hi’ sets off a sharp change of tone, from the balanced and peaceful mood of turning to the light in the previous terzina to the kinesically dense description of twisting one’s heart from the good, paired with the notion of straightening one’s temples towards vanities. The gestural stickiness of a twisting that is also a straightening, a forcing away from the good and a forcing towards what is vain remains troubling for the kinesic intelligence of the reader. Not by chance, scholars have locked horns on this passage, debating who exactly ought to feel targeted by these lines.¹⁷ Would Dante expect most or all of his readers to simply shake their heads in righteous despair as they read these lines that decry the twisted loves of some group of others?¹⁸ Or are the readers invited to ask themselves, as well, if they are consistently focusing their hearts and heads on the right things? The failure of the apostrophized here is a failure of interpretation, and also a failure of love, a twisting away of the heart from the source of all good.¹⁹ It seems reasonable to expect that any reader might potentially consider the degree to which this misdirection is also their own; the kinesic stickiness of the passage, correlated with the sharp reversals in tone on both sides of the terzina, suggests that it is ¹⁶ See Inglese, p. 127. ¹⁷ For a convincing reading of the lines as an appeal to the reader and the context of the debate, see Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Without Any Violence’ in Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, Vol. 1, ed. George Corbett and Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), pp. 181–202 (pp. 185–8). ¹⁸ My reading puts me in respectful disagreement with Robert Hollander’s commentary on lines 10–12 of Paradiso IX, dated 2013 and offered as a correction of the judgement previously published in 2003 and 2004: Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, ed. Robert and Jean Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2007). ¹⁹ On the connection between ‘folle amore’ and the condition of disorder in politics and in society, see André Pézard, Il Canto VIII del ‘Paradiso’ (Bologna: Cappelli, 1953), pp. 22–3.

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meant to jar. Paradiso is a highly exhortative canticle; while the souls we meet there may have no further need for penitence, Dante remains mindful of his readers’ needs. We might think, for instance of Epistle XI, in which Dante is explicit about his desire to incite just anger in the cardinals: ‘it would seem, then, that rather than having incited people to anger, I have provoked only blushes of confusion’ (Epistola XI, 13).²⁰ There too, he claims that the cardinals keep their backs rather than their faces turned towards the Bride’s chariot, ‘cum dorsa, non vultus, ad Sponse vehiculum habeatis’ (Epistola XI, 6);²¹ in other words, his addressees are turning their hearts and heads in the wrong direction. This passage of the Paradiso shares this exhortative mode. If, in Inferno, readers can strive to attain the practices of the ‘intelletti sani’ (‘sound minds’, Inf. 9, 61) as laid out in the text, in Paradiso, the reader must conversely guard against the errors of the ‘anime ingannate’. If the souls in Paradiso can turn ‘al sol che la riempie / come quel ben ch’a ogne cosa è tanto’, humans still in life are always turning in all sorts of directions, and not only always to God. The apostrophe here urges readers to experience the peaceful sensation of turning fully towards the true good, a good that will be shown in this canto by glimpses of loves that shine within that good and the darkness of loves that turn away. The ‘A hi anime ingannate’ exclamation is followed in the next line by ‘Ed ecco un altro di quelli splendori / ver’ me si fece’ (‘Look now! Another of those splendours came / making towards me there’, Par. 9, 13–14) another sharp shift in perspective. The ‘Ed ecco’ brings the reader, who perhaps has been wondering if they are implicated as an ‘anima ingannata’ or not, back to a sense of immediacy and presence, to a shared ‘here’ that offers the possibility of joining the present group. The reader is invited to be witness to a series of demonstrations of the possibilities of truly seeing and satisfying the desires of others in a direct and infinitely generous mode. Each gesture that follows here is one of offering and opening ‘’l suo voler piacermi / significava nel chiarir di fori’ (‘signified, / in flairs of brightness, it would do my will’, 14–15), clearly and immediately legible, and ‘li occhi di Beatrice, ch’eran fermi / sovra me, come ²⁰ The full citation in the original is: ‘Non itaque videor quemquam exacerbasse ad iurgia, quin potius confusionis ruborem et in vobis et aliis, nomine solo archimandritis, per orbem dumtaxat pudor eradicatus non sit totaliter, accendisse.’ Dante Alighieri, Epistole, Egloge, Questio de aqua et terra, ed. Marco Baglio, Luca Azzetta, Marco Petoletti, and Michele Rinaldi (Rome: Salerno, 2016), pp. 192–217 (p. 204). Translation and commentary in Dante Alighieri, Dante Alighieri, Four Political Letters, ed. and trans. Claire E. Honess (London: MHRA, 2007), p. 91. On Dante’s prophetic voice in this epistle, see Giuseppe Ledda, ‘Modelli biblici nella Commedia: Dante e san Paolo’ in La Bibbia di Dante: Esperienza mistica, profezia e teologia biblica, ed. Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei Frati Minori Conventuali, 2011), pp. 186–91. ²¹ Dante Alighieri, Epistole, Egloge, Questio de aqua et terra, p. 198.

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pria, di caro assenso / al mio disio certificato fermi’ (16–18).²² Dante’s request, ‘Deh, metti al mio voler tosto compenso, / beato spirto[…] e fammi prova ch’i’ possa in te refletter quel ch’i’ penso!’ (19–21),²³ is met with words that sound ‘come a cui di ben far giova’ (‘as though rejoicing in good deeds’, 24). Each gesture here is one of ‘voler’, as linked to ‘disio’ and ‘poter’, revealing the movements of the will that is infinitely free to respond to others and to ask response from others. Cunizza’s speech that follows unfolds an elegant, and as is fitting in the heaven of Venus, rhetorically rich, series of further contrasts between proximity and distance, between the shining distinction of heavenly individuals and the darkness of the masses far below. She asserts, on massively divergent vertical scales, values of destructive sameness and actively chosen loving difference: si leva un colle, e non surge molt’ alto là onde scese già una facella che fece ala contrada un grande assalto. D’una radice nacqui e io ed ella: Cunizza fu’ chiamata, e qui refulgo perché mi vinse il lume d’esta stella. (Par. 9, 28–33)²⁴

The previous canto has already glossed this discussion of how and why such differentiation happens: ‘Natura generata il suo cammino / simil farebbe sempre a’ generanti, / se non vincesse il proveder divino’ (Par. 8, 133–4).²⁵ As in many other points in the Commedia, distinctions are drawn between burning and burning, here between the ferocious ‘facella’ (‘burning brand’) of Cunizza’s tyrannical brother, Ezzellino III da Romano, whose burning assaults the land around him, and Cunizza’s ‘refulgere’ (‘blaze’). As Lino Pertile has shown in detail, there are far more references to fire, flames, and burning in Paradiso than either of the other two canticles.²⁶ If ‘ardore’ is attributed to the ²² ‘The eyes of Beatrice, firm on me / as earlier, confirmed me in desire, / giving beloved assurance as before.’ ²³ ‘You happy soul! / Quickly in answer, balance what I will. / Prove that in you I can reflect my thought’ ²⁴ ‘A hill starts up—though not to any height / from which there once came down a burning brand / who ravaged all the countryside around. / From one same root, this torch and I were born. / Cunizza was my name, and I blaze here / because the light of Venus vanquished me.’ ²⁵ ‘The course of generated things would run / unchanged in nature from their generants, / if not defeated by God’s providence.’ ²⁶ Lino Pertile, ‘L’antica fiamma: La metamorfosi del fuoco nella “Commedia” di Dante’, The Italianist, 11 (1991): 29–60. See also my chapter on ‘Ardent Attention’ in Dante’s Persons, pp. 123–63.

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flames that burn the violent against nature (Inf. 14, 28–39), it is also that which characterizes Bernard in his love for the Virgin: ‘ond’io ardo / tutto d’amor’ (‘I burn in all my soul / for love of her’, Par. 31, 100–2). Amidst ongoing claims for the recognition of diversity within groups that we might expect to be homogeneous, such as families, the canto continues to set apart other groups that are characterized by their lack of internal differentiation. When Cunizza states that ‘lietamente a me medesma indulgo / la cagion di mia sorte’ (‘gladly I myself forgive myself / that influence’, Par. 9, 34–5), she notes that this ‘parrìa forse forte al vostro vulgo’ (‘[It] will, to humdrum minds of yours, seem hard’, 36). ‘Vostro vulgo’ points to a plural ‘you’, a group characterized as an uncomprehending mass. Much commentarial fantasy has emerged here, to account for why Cunizza might be given the place that Dante gives her, this prominence in his Paradiso as one of his beati. The Chiose Cassinesi elaborate her changed life, in which she models herself on Mary Magdalene: ‘amorem talem suum ferventum circa mundane accensius revolvit in Deum, sicut fecit Madalena.’²⁷ But apart from the scant historical documents, showing Cunizza freeing her household servants, and apart from the stories commentators have constructed, all we get from Dante in the poem is a display of Cunizza’s current mode of being.²⁸ She does not tell us of her changed life or of her penitence. She shows forth only a configuration of attitude that shows, rhetorically or gesturally, what it looks like to have turned from being overcome by love to loving in God. Perhaps Dante imagined that his readers would know Cunizza’s full story, from the gossipy parts at the beginning to the edifying bits at the end. But if he really was also already imagining readers ‘che questo tempo chiameranno antico’ (‘who’ll count as ancient our own time’, Par. 17, 120), then it might just be that there is enough in Cunizza’s exposition of attitude, in the way that she speaks of her past, that she gestures towards Folco, that she offers her dark prophecies, that can show the reader what this sort of transformed love looks like. Cunizza turns her attention to ‘questa luculenta e cara gioia’ (‘this precious gleaming jewel’, Par. 9, 37), with a ‘questa’, a this, a term of nearness and shared reference. This ‘gioia’ belongs to nostro cielo, and proximity is again reinforced with ‘più m’è propinqua’ (‘nearest me’, 38). These terms of proximity are also ones of praise and endearment: she asserts the ‘grande fama’ (‘great fame’, 39) of this soul, the basis of which, poetic or as a man of the church, has been ²⁷ ‘She turned her fervent love for earthly things to God, just as Mary Magdalene did.’ Codice cassinese, comment on Par. 9, 33. ²⁸ See, for instance, Jacopo della Lana, who emphasizes the ‘larghezza’ of her love. Commentary on lines 32–3.

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much debated.²⁹ Again, as in Cunizza’s case, no detail is given in the text of the poem itself, but instead has been supplied at length by commentary.³⁰ Even when Folco speaks for himself, he will, like Cunizza, dedicate his words to first displaying a certain attitude towards his amorous past and will then, in the second part of his discourse, turn to indicate another, to speak in celebration of another soul in the heaven of Venus. He will not, at any point, discuss the ‘meritorious’ part of his life, giving over the bulk of his speech to gesture towards another. ‘Vedi,’ Cunizza says, ‘se far si dèe l’omo eccellente, / sì ch’altra vita la prima relinqua’ (‘You see, then? Shouldn’t men seek excellence, / bequeathing from their first a second life?’ 41–2). This second person singular ‘vedi’, again chooses a different audience than the ‘vostro vulgo’. It is direct, assertive, indicating in this tone of nearness. Does it seek out the reader (with Dante standing in) understood as an individual rather than a component of an unseeing mass? This ‘vedi’ is in fact contrasted with ‘ciò non pensa la turba presente / che Tagliamento e Adice rinchiude’ (‘the present crowd, well, they don’t think of that, / shut up between the Adige and Tagliament’, 43–4). The closure between rivers defines the group that is reduced to a geographical identity and quite literally enclosed by it. In an even darker mode, the uncomprehending and impenitent group, referred to in the third person, is subsequently further reduced to the undifferentiated blood of ‘le genti’ that changes the colour of the river ‘ma tosto fia che Padov’al palude / cangerà l’acqua che Vincenza bagna / per essere al dover le genti crude’ (46–8).³¹ The members of this group have not chosen to accept Cangrande, a choice that, according to Dante, would show their capacity for judgement and thus their status as individuals within a providential plan. We might see the concrete playing out of the ‘drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie’ (‘you strain your brows direct to nothingness’, Par. 9, 12) in Cunizza’s definition of Rizzardo da Cammino, who ‘signoreggia e va con la testa alta’ (‘head held high, struts brashly on’, 50) but will soon be caught like a little bird. Cunizza then shifts dramatically upward: ‘sù sono specchi, voi dicete Troni, / onde refulge a noi Dio giudicante; / sì che questi parlar ne paion buoni’ (61–3).³² Against the human ‘voi’, Cunizza’s ‘noi’ sees these ‘parlar’, these prophecies of massacre, as ‘buoni’, in the light of God’s shining (‘refulge’). ²⁹ See Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets, Textuality and Truth in the Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 114–22. ³⁰ On Dante’s treatment of Folco of Marseilles, see Tristan Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption: Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 205–46. ³¹ ‘But Padua, whose folk so bitterly / resist what’s right, will see its marshes change / as, soon, the streams that bathe Vicenza blush.’

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And it is at this moment that Folco appears in a joyful mode, full of splendour and celebration: Per letiziar là sù fulgor s’acquista, sì come riso qui; ma giù s’abbiua l’ombra di fuor, come la mente è trista. (Par. 9, 70–2)³³

Shining in heaven is compared to smiling ‘qui’, and contrasted with the sadness and darkness of shades in hell. In another shift, the ‘qui’ refers to here on earth, a qui that is shared with the reader. Critics have had to remind one another that Dante writes when he is on earth and therefore the ‘giù’ cannot refer to the earth, but to Hell.³⁴ Again, the confusion is revealing. From where does the poet’s voice speak? If we trace indicators of proximity across the canto, from ‘ecco’ to ‘qui’, we find multiple possible vantage points for the reader and the reader’s relation to the poet and to the vision. Lino Pertile points out that ‘qui’ is used frequently in the poem in contrast with ‘là’ to emphasize the difference between earthly life and hell or earthly life and heaven. Pertile also examines three cases in Inferno where ‘qui’ is variously ambiguous. As he notes, the ‘qui’ often seems to be accompanied by a gesture that is invisible to the reader, pushing the reader into feats of imagination and interpretation to fill in the gap.³⁵ A further ambiguity in this particular ‘qui’ is introduced by its framing: by Cunizza’s earlier ‘qui refulgo’ (‘I blaze here’) of line 32 and by Folco’s later statement a few lines on, ‘Non però qui si pente, ma si ride’ (‘Yet here we don’t repent such things. We smile’, 103), in which heaven would seem to be the realm of the smile.³⁶ As I noted in Chapter 5, the smile has been justly singled out as the emblematic gesture of Paradiso.³⁷ Along with what I would suggest is the other key gesture of Paradiso, indication, the smile articulates relation throughout Dante’s journey through the heavens and into the Empyrean. So is the smile in this passage understood as an earthly gesture to aid the reader in affective response to the heavenly realm, along the lines of ‘la Scrittura condescende / a vostra facultate, e piedi e mano / attribuisce a Dio’ ³³ ‘A s laughter here breeds laughter, there above / sheer happiness shoots brilliant flares. Below, / a darkening shadow marks the saddened mind.’ ³⁴ As Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi reminds us in her commentary. This goes against Porena, Mattaglia, and Sapegno. See her comment in Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, vol. 3, p. 255. ³⁵ Lino Pertile, ‘Qui in Inferno: deittici e cultura popolare’, Italian Quarterly, 37 (2000): 57–67. ³⁶ See Rachel Jacoff, ‘The Post-Palinodic Smile: “Paradiso” VIII and IX’, Dante Studies, 98 (1980): 117–20. ³⁷ See Hawkins, ‘A ll Smiles’.

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(Par. 4, 43–5),³⁸ or is it a heavenly gesture? The ambiguity of the ‘come riso qui’ here might suggest that it is, after all, both, that it is precisely this multivalent bodily sign that can be common to both heaven and earth.³⁹ Folco’s speech reworks elements of Cunizza’s speech.⁴⁰ Here, the statement ‘non però qui si pente, ma si ride’ glosses her ‘lietamente a me medesma indulgo’. He specifies that one smiles ‘non della colpa, ch’a mente non torna, / ma del valor ch’ordinò e provide’ (‘not […] at sin—we don’t think back to that— / but at that Might that governs and provides’, Par. 9, 104–5). The smile may thus be read, in the light of this verbal clarification, as the reaction at seeing the good that creates order in the universe. This clarification melds Cunizza’s statement of her ‘self-indulgence’ with her gloss on her prophecies of massacre, that all these disparate things can be viewed in the light of ‘Dio giudicante’ (‘God […] judging all’, 62). Folco describes the created design of the universe as fundamentally the effect of ‘affetto’: Qui si rimira nell’arte ch’addorna cotanto affetto, e discernesi ’l bene per che ’l mondo di sù quel di giù torna (Par. 9, 106–8)⁴¹

This discerning of the good comments effectively on Cunizza’s ‘sì che questi parlar ne paion buoni’, but also points forward in its notion of shared contemplation, ‘rimirare in’ looking not just at, but within, to the prolonged invitation of Canto 10, in which the reader is asked to join in seeing and delighting in God’s love, visible in the divine art. The joyful creative power of God’s affetto conditions a directedness of seeing in the community of the beati. That communicability of ‘affetto’ is referenced in Paradiso 6 where it is strongly linked with justice: ‘quindi addolcisce la viva giustizia / in noi l’affetto sì, che non si puote torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia’ (Par. 6, 121–3)⁴². Divine justice so sweetens the shape of our desires (‘l’affetto’), ³⁸ ‘Scripture condescends / to your capacities, and says that God / has hands and feet.’ ³⁹ Noting that smiles are often ambiguous, and reading Folco’s smile as particularly enigmatic, Elina Gertsman discusses the gaudium aeternum, the eternal joy of heaven, visible on the faces of the angelic figures on the exterior of the Reims Cathedral. See ‘The Facial Gesture’, p. 35. ⁴⁰ On the parallelism between the speeches of Cunizza and Folco, see Michelangelo Picone, ‘“Paradiso” IX: Dante, Folchetto e la dispora trobadorica’, Medioevo romanzo, 8 (1981–3): 47–89 (esp. pp. 62, 78). ⁴¹ ‘In wonder, we here prize the art to which / His power brings beauty, and discern the good / though which the world above turns all below.’ Inglese has ‘effetto’ here. I revert to Petrocchi’s ‘affetto’. ⁴² ‘Thus Living Justice sweetly shapes and fits / a longing for the good within our hearts, / so this cannot be wrenched to any wrong.’

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Justinian comments, that we cannot twist those ‘affetti’ to any injustice. In other words, it becomes impossible to do what Dante warns against in that contested address to the reader in Paradiso 9, ‘da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori’. In Paradiso, the shapes that the term ‘affetto’ takes are often qualified by the adjective ‘ardente’; ‘ardente affetto’ (‘burning love’) is attributed to Cacciaguida (Par. 15, 43). While in Folco’s discourse, the ardour is attributed to his youth ‘più non arse la figlia di Belo’ (‘Belus’s daughter […] never burned more’, Par. 9, 97), and the ‘affetto’ is God’s, the two terms will be yoked together later on in the Paradiso, as in Canto 24, when Saint Peter speaks of Beatrice’s ‘ardente affetto’ (29).⁴³ The ardour in Paradiso 9 echoes the evocation of ardour with imperial connotations in Purgatorio 9: Poi mi parea che, poi rotata un poco, terribil come folgor discendesse, e me rapisse suso infino al foco. Ivi parëa che ella e ïo ardesse; e sì lo ’ncendio imaginato cosse che convenne che ’l sonno si rompesse. (Purg. 9, 28–33)⁴⁴

As is well known, ‘terribil come folgor’ is a formula that appears in similar words in two of Dante’s Epistole, V and VI.⁴⁵ The descending flight of the eagle is compared to Henry VII’s descent into Italy. As in the ‘rapimento’ of Ganymede, the image has both political and sensual connotations. In Folco’s Dido-like ardour, he submits to the imprinting of love. Submission is the appropriate reaction for Dante, caught up in the ardour of the dream or transition of Purgatorio 9, and of the people of Italy in response to their imperial destiny.⁴⁶ The sensual metaphorics of the people’s acceptance of the emperor and his vicar, Cangrande, can be read in the language of Epistle V, where Dante describes the emperor as bridegroom, hastening to his wedding with Italy. ⁴³ On the concept of ardent attention in the poem, see my Dante’s Persons, Chapter 4. ⁴⁴ ‘And then it seemed that, wheeling slightly round, / as terrible as lightning, down it struck / and tore me upwards to the sphere of fire. / And there the eagle and I, it seemed, both blazed. / And this imagined fire so scorched and seared / that, yielding, dreaming sleep just had to break.’ ⁴⁵ See Emilio Pasquini, Vita di Dante, I giorni e le opere (Milan: BUR, 2006). ⁴⁶ On the status of this dream, see Aiste˙ Kiltinavicˇiūte˙, ‘Rapture and Visionary Violence in Dante’s Purgatorio 9,’ Annali d’Italianistica 39 (2021), pp. 247-272.

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Folco then moves on to Dante’s next curiosity: Tu vuo’ saper chi è ’n questa lumera che qui a presso me così scintilla (Par. 9, 112–13)⁴⁷

This ‘a presso me’ mirrors Cunizza’s presentation of Folco ‘questa luculenta e cara gioia / del nostro cielo che più m’è propinqua’ (Par. 9, 37–8)⁴⁸. The ‘qui’ reinforces the expression of nearness, another here following ‘Qui si rimira’. Here, there is the possibility to contemplate God’s art as is only possible with a distanced perspective from earth, but also, and critically, to recognize and point towards the brilliance of the souls near to hand. In this exercise of distance juxtaposed with proximity, we move from the scale of the ‘mondo di sù’ to ‘qui a presso me’. The reason that the reader is particularly forced here to navigate these swift juxtapositions of here and there, of distance and proximity, is brought the fore; we are in questo cielo, in cui l’ombra s’appunta che ’l vostro mondo face (Par. 9, 118–19)⁴⁹

This present sphere, ‘questo cielo’, lies in the point, the extremity of the shadow that ‘vostro mondo face’. It is the extreme limit of contact between ‘nostro’ and ‘vostro’, between the earthly and the heavenly. We might consider this a moment of training for a mode that will continue throughout Dante’s journey through the heavens. Even in the highest reaches, swift leaps will be needed to comprehend earthly fallenness from within paradisiacal proximities. Throughout Paradiso, affect swiftly shifts from joy in proximity and meeting, as we have seen in the encounter with Cacciaguida, to harsh reminders of the city ‘per division fatto vermiglio’ (‘coloured in the conflict bright blood red’, Par. 16, 154). In the midst of these rigorous exercises of orientation, recognition, and indication, we find the luminous soul of Rahab, who ‘seals’ this heaven: Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma in alcun cielo dell’alta vittoria che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma, perch’ella favorò la prima Gloria ⁴⁷ ‘You wish to know who shines within that lamp / here close against my side and scintillates.’ ⁴⁸ ‘[…] this deep gleaming jewel that, nearest me, / rejoices in our heavenly sky.’ ⁴⁹ ‘[…] this heaven, where earth’s shadow points.’

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di Giosuè in su la Terra Santa, che poco tocca al papa la memoria. (Par. 9, 121–6)⁵⁰

The rima equivoca is a crucial moment in which the victory of the crucifixion is shown visibly and heard clearly in the text. Across the terzina, the word ‘palma’ is spread out and aligned with ‘palma’, like Christ’s hands on the cross. The reader is invited to contemplate the crucifixion in these lines, in the ‘palma/palma’ rhyme spanning the word ‘vittoria’ and the ‘l’una e l’altra palma’ across a single line. This opening of hands, evoked here in a highly visible fashion, has been read variously, as Benvenuto details in his commentary.⁵¹ Are they the hands of Rahab herself, helping Joshua’s spies? Are they Joshua’s hands, raised in a prayer of thanksgiving for his victory? Or are they Christ’s hands, fixed to the cross? While most, but not all, modern commentators opt for the Christic solution, this does not mean that the resonant term ‘palma’ here should be stripped of its other figural antecedents, which perhaps can be allowed to echo in the background.⁵² Barański notes that the echo with Inferno 9, ‘battiensi a palme’ (‘with slapping palm’, 50), ‘seems calculated to establish a vivid contrast between the Furies and Christ’. He also explores a ‘thin, almost invisible thread that connects the term to Purgatorio 9’ and Dante’s dream in which he compares himself to Ganymede.⁵³ In Aeneid V, Virgil describes Ganymede’s guardians who ‘longaevi palmas nequiquam ad sidera tendunt / custodes’ (256–7).⁵⁴ A further resonance may be found in Purgatorio 8, in which a single soul in the valley of the rulers prays with the carefully designated gesture: ‘Ella giunse e levò ambo le palme’ (‘This soul, first, joined his palms then lifted them’, Purg. 8, 10). As Moshe Barasch has detailed, open palms are often a gesture of despair in pre-Christian times, as is documented in the Aeneid, but the gesture is reconceived from the earliest Christian practice as a form of prayer repeating or re-enacting the crucifixion.⁵⁵ The gesture of despair is transformed into the key gesture of hope. ⁵⁰ ‘This much was right, for Rahab to be set / in some such heaven as a martyr’s palm, / to mark the victory won by Christ’s two palms. / She looked with favour on that proud assault, / of Joshua as victor in the Holy Land— / a place that hardly stirs the papal conscience.’ ⁵¹ Benvenuto da Imola, comment on Par. 9, 118–26. ⁵² See the comments in Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ed. Emilio Pasquini and Antonio Quaglio, (Milan: Garzanti, 1987), pp. 852–3; Chiavacci Leonardi, vol. 3, pp. 263–4; Inglese, vol. 3, pp. 135–6. For alternative readings, see the list in Hollander from the editions of 2000 and 2007. ⁵³ Barański, ‘Without Any Violence’, pp. 201–2. ⁵⁴ ‘in vain stretch out their palms to the stars’ (Aen. V, 256–7). See Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, Appendix Vergiliana, vol. 1, p. 488. ⁵⁵ Moshe Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press, 1976).

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As Peter Hawkins notes, the doubling of ‘palma’ in these lines, along with the doubling of reference to Joshua and to Jesus, draws our attention to the poem’s figural density.⁵⁶ As the enabler of Joshua’s victory, Rahab is the sign of Christ’s victory. As Joshua leads his people out of Jordan and brings Rahab with him, so Jesus brings humanity to salvation and brings Rahab first, as is explained here, to heaven. Rahab thus becomes a singular figural link between Joshua and Jesus, sealed in the reader’s memory by that ambiguously dense image of palms. If Mary Magdalene is testimony to the resurrection, Rahab actively aids the realization of God’s providential plan on earth. She is able to recognize the Hebrew spies as the proper protagonists of God’s design, against her fellow citizens.⁵⁷ I would add that Rahab’s act of discernment is precisely the sort of action that Dante wishes to urge his readers to engage in. The canto has shown us bloody ends for those citizens who do not manage to discern in the person of Cangrande the tracings of God’s providential plan for Italian unity. Like Rahab, Dante expects his contemporaries to act in favour of forces that he understands as tending towards civic order, justice, and harmony. As Rahab has acted based on discernment of God’s providence in life, Cunizza and Folco are shown performing precisely this act of seeing, indicating, and celebrating excellence. More than telling their own stories, as the infernal shades are wont to do, Cunizza and Folco have an indexical quality, each emphasizing the act of pointing towards the next. They model, in repeated and crescendoing fashion, what it means to recognize glory. This indexical exercise culminates in Rahab’s silent refulgence, in which the known biblical story speaks for itself. And, as ever in Dante’s poem, providential history is never left as history but always moves forward in both implicit and explicit ways. In a shift that Chiavacci Leonardi finds ‘brusco e inatteso’,⁵⁸ Folco moves from praise of Rahab to haranguing Florence: La tua città, che di colui è pianta che pria volse le spalle al suo fattore e di cui è la ’nvidia tanto pianta produce e spande il maladetto fiore (Par. 9, 127–30)⁵⁹ ⁵⁶ See Peter S. Hawkins, ‘Dante’s Rahab’, MLN, 124.5 (2009): S70–S80. ⁵⁷ See Pirovano, ‘Nel cielo del pianeta’, p. 23. ⁵⁸ See Chiavacci Leonardi, p. 264, n. 127. ⁵⁹ ‘That town of yours, a thriving weed that he, / the first of all to shun his own creator, / has planted there (his mean-ness stirs complaint) / breeds and distributes that accursèd flower.’

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In another equivocal rhyme that follows the ‘palma/palma’ rhyme so closely, the ‘pianta/pianta’ rhyme links growth with weeping. Again, the particular intervenes, this time with violence: ‘la tua città’. ‘Fattore’ and ‘fiore’ will again appear in close proximity in rhyme position in Paradiso 33 to denote the Incarnation (5, 9), but here the lines testify in embodied gestural terms that the personified city is enacting another turning away from the good. The ‘fiore’ in this case is not Christ, but instead the ‘fiorino’. The ‘volgere’ here is akin to the ‘torcere’ of the anime ingannate. To dramatize this stubborn turning towards wealth and earthly power, the ‘fiorino’ becomes, in this passage, the ironic fixed point of reference: Per questo l’Evangelio e i dottor magni son derelitti, e solo ai Decretali si studia sì che pare a’ lor vivagni. A questo intende il papa e ’ cardinali; non vanno i lor pensieri a Nazarette, là dove Gabrïèl aperse l’ali. (Par. 9, 133–8, my emphasis)⁶⁰

In this scenario the ‘questo’ is always only the coin, and the scene in Nazareth, where the ‘fattore / non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura’ (‘maker […] did not disdain to make himself his making’, Par. 33, 5–6), is ‘là’, distanced. As Claire Honess has noted, there are numerous parallels between the accusations here and those in Epistle XI.⁶¹ In that letter, Dante decries the fact that all men, including clerics, have espoused cupidity rather than charity and justice. This espousal of cupidity is seen in their practices of reading: ‘Iacet Gregorius tuus in telis aranearum; iacet Ambrosius in neglectis clericorum latibulis; iacet Augustinus abiectus, Dionysius, Damascenus et Beda; et nescio quod Speculum, Innocentium et Ostiensem declamant.’ (Epistole, XI.7.16).⁶² As Dante explains with the ‘questo/là’ horizon established here in the lines of Paradiso 9, this sort of reading of decretals focuses the reader on the gains of here and now, to the exclusion of the revelation of truths that point beyond themselves. ⁶⁰ ‘The Gospels and the teachers of the Church / are, for sheer greed, abandoned. Decretals / (their margins show as much) are all one reads. / The pope and cardinals are set on that. / Their thoughts will never turn to Nazareth, / where Gabriel once opened angel wings.’ ⁶¹ See Claire Honess’s comment on Epistle XI in Four Political Letters, pp. 92–3. ⁶² ‘your beloved Gregory languishes in the cobwebs; Ambrose lies neglected by the clergy in some forgotten corner, along with Augustine, Dionysius, John Damascene, and Bede. Instead they trumpet some Speculum or other, and the works of Innocent and the man from Ostia’. Dante Alighieri, Epistole, Egloge, Questio de aqua et terra, p. 206.

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When the truth of the Incarnation is distanced, such disorientation must be repaired with a future reversal, set out with a ‘ma’: Ma Vaticano e l’altre parti elette di Roma che son state cimitero ala milizia che Pietro seguette, tosto libere fien dell’avoltero. (Par. 9, 139–42)⁶³

And thus the canto ends with the word ‘avoltero’, a reflection on true adultery, adultery that finds no place in the heaven of Venus. Real adultery is not, it turns out, Cunizza’s various amorous liaisons, or even the ‘noiarsi’ to which Dido subjected her husband and Aeneas’s wife. It is instead the acts of the pope and the cardinals who turn to the wrong object of desire, abandoning their studies of holy texts and thus abandoning the Church as bride. From this tawdry note, Canto 10 will begin with another jolt of perspective, to the divine life of the Trinity and an invitation to the reader to look up, to be there and not in this fallen earthly here.

Beatrice’s blush As the poem articulates the upper reaches of Paradiso, even where the shadow of the earth has long since fallen away, Dante continues to startle the reader into position-taking, as the text leaps between decrying earthly failings and embracing heavenly joy. In this section, I will consider one very particular bodily sign associated with such leaps in the Commedia: Beatrice’s blush. Modern psychology has investigated the particularities of the propensity to blush, noting that is a distinctly human tendency. While our facial expressions and many of our gestures can be found in primates, blushing is a uniquely human trait. Its evolutionary value, it has been surmised, is that a blush can display to others how we react to transgressions.⁶⁴ What is particularly fascinating about the blush is that it always manifests in interactive situations and that it is possible to become affected by blush-provoking scenarios in which we are simply ⁶³ ‘The Vatican and other parts of Rome / which, chosen well, have been the burial ground / for all who followed Peter as his troop / shall soon be free of this adultery.’ ⁶⁴ See Frans B. M. de Waal, ‘Preface’ in The Psychological Significance of the Blush, ed. W. Ray Crozier and Peter J. de Jong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. xi–xii.

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bystanders and not protagonists.⁶⁵ For Dante, as we will see, the blush is a potent tool for thinking about how we respond as individuals and as groups to the transgressions of others. I will suggest that it is fundamental to read Beatrice’s blushing episodes within the vast choreography of somatic signs available in the Commedia. When we take this reading of the blush as part of a broader system, we can see how a bodily signal such as this one can be aimed at the reader’s affective responses.⁶⁶ Beginning from the premise that the implications of Beatrice’s reddening face are multilayered, this section will suggest a number of physiological, emotional, psychological and spiritual responses that are meant to be available to the reader on subconscious and conscious levels, providing keys for reading and responding to two cardinally important prophetic moments in the poem.⁶⁷ Beatrice’s reddenings in Purgatorio 33 and Paradiso 27 are associated with moments in which the current and future state of the Church is at issue.⁶⁸ On these occasions, prophecies are staged, and these are also moments in which Dante is invested with the role of prophet himself. In what follows, I investigate this association of flushing red, the condition of the Church, and prophecy (handed on) in order to consider what is at stake in this somatic manifestation of the prophetic mode. I will suggest that these passages, dedicated as they are to the transfer of the prophetic voice to Dante, simulate the possibility of the intersubjective transfer of bodily states and bodily signs. The passages describe the overflow of reaction from one individual to another, even as the text attempts to propagate that overflow of reaction into the reader as well. A bit of exercise for our kinesic intelligence may help us, as readers, to comprehend the prophetic gesture and the sort of response that Dante might invite. The prophetic investiture that occurs here does not take ⁶⁵ See Rowland S. Miller, ‘The interactive origins and outcomes of embarrassment’ in The Psychological Significance of the Blush, ed. W. Ray Crozier and Peter J. de Jong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 185–202. ⁶⁶ For discussions of blushing, see, for example, the glosses by D’Ancona, Bosco, Giacalone, Hollander, Inglese, Chiavacci Leonardi, and Fosca, which I will discuss in more detail later in this chapter. ⁶⁷ In recent years there have been various studies of medieval emotions and affects: Trione, La Poetica dell’A ffetto; Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, Passioni dell’anima, Teorie e usi degli affetti nella cultura medievale (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2015); Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, Sensible Moyen Âge, Une histoire des émotions dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Seuil, 2015); Alessio Decaria and Lino Leonardi (eds.) ‘Ragionar d’amore’, Il lessico delle emozioni nella lirica medievale (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2015). Zygmunt Barański notes, however, that what is lacking are studies on the emotions that are ‘indirizzati a chiarire la loro presenza e i loro risvolti nell’A lighieri da una prospettiva storica’: Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Dottrina degli affetti e teologia’. ⁶⁸ Manfredi Porena and Mario Aversano have noticed a link between Purgatorio 33, 46 and Canto 27 of the Paradiso, but without discussing the correlations around Beatrice’s blush. See Porena’s commentary on Purg. 33, 7–12 and Par. 27, 35–6; Mario Aversano, La quinta ruota. Studi sulla ‘Commedia’ (Turin: Tirrenia Stampatori, 1988), p. 135.

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place only in the form of explanatory declarations, as is often asserted, but rather has as much to do with presenting a certain disposition and bodily attitude that is not, perhaps, for Dante alone, but allows for the transfer of effects onto the reader, listener, or ‘viewer’. In Purgatorio 33, Beatrice’s somatic transformations are highlighted in a series of sudden shifts in the affective atmosphere of the Earthly Paradise: ‘Deus, venerunt gentes’, alternando or tre or quattro dolce salmodia, le donne cominciaro, e lacrimando; e Bëatrice, sospirosa e pia, quelle ascoltava, sì fatta che poco più ala croce si cambiò Maria. Ma poi che l’altre vergini dier loco a lei di dir, levata dritta in piè, rispuose, colorata come foco: ‘Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum, sorelle mie dilette, modicum et vos videbitis me.’ (Purg. 33, 1–12)⁶⁹

Here, as elsewhere in the Commedia, a small portion of a psalm (in this case Psalm 78) is embedded in the text, but it is clear that the reference is meant to overflow its textual space. Dante notes that the virtues alternate verses, a familiar liturgical practice, with the three theological virtues singing one verse and the four cardinal virtues the next.⁷⁰ In this reference to the alternation of verses, the three-word citation ‘Deus, venerunt gentes’ (Purg. 33, 1) unfolds in the reader’s mind into a sequence of verses that can be sung in alternation, into words that require a response. We might consider such references in the Commedia as invitations to the reader to sing the whole psalm and, in doing so, to experience personally the emotions and the spiritual state the psalm expresses.⁷¹ We must, then, consider the entirety of the psalm and its ⁶⁹ ‘“Deus, venerunt gentes,”—alternating / three, then four—the seven donne, weeping / gently, sweetly, began to chant that psalm. / And Beatrice, sighing in compassion, / listened and changed, to hear them, hardly less / than Mary did when she stood by the Cross. / But when those other virgins granted her / a place to speak, she, rising to her feet, / responded, fiery in colour, thus: / “Modicum, et non videbitis me; / et iterum, my most beloved sisters, / modicum, et vos videbitis me.”’ ⁷⁰ On liturgy in the Commedia, see Giuseppe Ledda (ed.), Preghiera e Liturgia nella Commedia: Atti Del Convegno Internazionale Di Studi, Ravenna, 12 Novembre 2011 (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei Frati Minori Conventuali, 2013). ⁷¹ See Phillips-Robins, Liturgical Song, pp. 81–108.

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full emotional range as intended reference (or, we might even say an intended ‘experience’) within the text and not simply the few words quoted here. In its entirety, the psalm speaks of the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, describing the pouring forth of the blood of God’s servants, calling for divine retribution. The voice of the psalm expects that God’s zeal will be kindled like fire; lament over death, defilement, and destruction is matched with faith in God’s just anger. Beatrice’s face provides a somatic key for reading the two motifs of the psalm, affliction and certain hope. The change in Beatrice is first a reaction of grief, likened to Mary’s grief at the foot of the cross.⁷² Though the text does not describe it directly, we might justifiably imagine Beatrice as pale in that moment. Medieval understandings of the physiological workings of the affects took grief to entail a withdrawal of the vital spirit and accompanying heat from the arteries into the heart.⁷³ Her subsequent flush is a second change, marked out with that ‘Ma poi’ (‘But when’, Purg. 33, 7), a response that comes like the alternation of singing voices for the verses of the psalm.⁷⁴ In this second change, the heart sends forth the vital spirit and heat out into the body and the face, a movement associated in medieval mappings with the physiology of joy or anger or shame.⁷⁵ The blush models a response that is not the pallor of despair, sorrow, fear, or even the absence of response. It figures a vital, active response. The question that emerges here is how, precisely, are we to interpret this reddening that immediately precedes a markedly prophetic moment in the text? And how does this sharp change in mood or affective atmosphere influence the reader’s approach to the prophecy that follows? Are we primed, in

⁷² See Chiavacci Leonardi, vol. 2, p. 958. ⁷³ Corinne Saunders, ‘Mind, Body and Affect in Medieval English Arthurian Romance’ in Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature. Body, Mind, Voice, ed. Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington, and Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2015), pp. 31–46 (p. 34). ⁷⁴ Andrea Battistini reads Beatrice’s changed colour in this passage as a representation of the ‘rapidità con cui si devono succedere gli eventi, nel sottinteso di una vendetta che non tarderà a venire’. See ‘Tra memoria e amnesia. Lettura di “Purg.” XXXIII’, L’Alighieri, 48.29 (2007): 93–106 (p. 95). ⁷⁵ Aristotle explains that physical changes connected to emotional changes are caused by expansions or contractions of the heart, provoked by change in the temperature of the body (De motu animalium, 7–10). Cf. Aquinas, De motu cordis: ‘Non enim affectiones animae causantur ab alterationibus cordis, sed potius causant eas; unde in passionibus animae, puta in ira, formale est, quod est ex parte affectionis, scilicet quod sit appetitus vindictae; materiale autem quod pertinet ad motum cordis, puta quod sit accensio sanguinis circa cor.’ See Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. On p. 34 there is a discussion of blushing. For a series of thermodynamic models for the passions, see Domenico Laurenza, ‘Cuore, carattere e passioni tra scienza e arte in Leonardo’, Micrologus, 11 (2003): 229–39. On the heat of the heart as cardiocentric source of gender difference in medieval thought, see my The Medieval Heart, pp. 96–142.

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our visualization of Beatrice’s flush, to respond in a particular affective key?⁷⁶ When Beatrice tells Dante to take her words ‘se non scritto, almen dipinto’ (‘at least as image, not yet written script’, Purg. 33, 76) within him, we are left with a vivid image of Beatrice’s visible incarnation of a reversal that marks out the prophetic mode. Her turn from white to red provides an image of a mode or attitude that is far more comprehensible than the detail of the prophecy itself, that Dante complains is ‘sovra mia veduta’ (‘above my powers of sight’, Purg. 33, 82). As scholars have observed, the thrust of Purgatorio 33 seems to be dramatization of human confusion when encountering the word of God. The citation of ‘Modicum, et non videbitis me’ is an evocation of the archetypal ‘obscurity’ of the prophecies of Christ.⁷⁷ It does not seem by chance that it is precisely this passage, along with the ‘narrazion buia’ (‘dark narrative’, Purg. 33, 46), in which Dante provides a somatic marker to accompany the prophetic word, thus offering the reader an alternative mode of access to the prophetic message, activated by an affective and corporeal image. When challenging the reader with obscure prophetic words, Dante seems to indicate the necessity of relying, also, on our embodied knowledge, our intuitive and nonpropositional grasping of the sort of the situation that might provoke such a strong somatic shift.⁷⁸ Beatrice’s face provides an immediately accessible visualization of response. Even without understanding the content to which she responds, her stark change alerts us to a situation, or to a transgression, that requires an immediate reaction.⁷⁹ Dante understands that humans read faces and react to them as if they articulated speech; this much is clear from numerous moments in the Paradiso. While Beatrice of course has the capacity to read Dante’s thought, he nonetheless describes her reading his face just as ordinary humans might do amongst themselves, as in Canto 4, for example: Io mi tacea, ma ’l mio disir dipinto m’era nel viso, e ’l dimandar con ello, più caldo assai che per parlar distinto. (Par. 4, 10–12)⁸⁰ ⁷⁶ Fosca attributes the reddening to ‘sacrosanto sdegno’ and says it is that which Peter displays in Par. 27. See comment on Purg. 33, 7–12. ⁷⁷ Barański, Dante e i segni, pp. 61–3. For an in-depth analysis of the modicum pronounced by Beatrice, and her momentary withdrawal, see Olivia Holmes, Dante’s Two Beloveds. Ethics and Erotics in the ‘Divine Comedy’ (Yale: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 157–93. ⁷⁸ On the functioning of these mechanisms in real and virtual worlds, see Giuseppe Riva, John Waterworth, and Dianne Murray (eds.), Interacting with Presence: HCI and the Sense of Presence in Computer Mediated Environments (Warsaw and Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2014). ⁷⁹ See Gallese and Wojciehowski, ‘How Stories Make Us Feel’. ⁸⁰ ‘I still kept silent. Yet my keen desire / was painted—and my question too—within my eyes, / warmer by far than well-formed words could speak.’

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While Dante must carry Beatrice’s words as if ‘painted’ within him for the purposes of later contemplation, reading, and reflection, in this case, Dante’s desires are legible as if ‘painted’ upon his face. Such emphasis suggests an implicit task for the reader, who might capture sequences of images to interiorize and incorporate within. These images, if adequately potent, might resist unravelling in time and provide material for later contemplation, meditation, and action. In Paradiso 27, a related reddening again accompanies a condemnation of those who ought to care for the Church, a prediction of future salvation and another moment of prophetic investiture for Dante. In this case, it is the ‘trascolorarsi’ of Saint Peter and all the souls that accompany him, followed by that of Beatrice. As he describes Saint Peter, Dante offers a dense simile that asks the reader to imagine two planets of two different colours like two birds who exchange their feathers: e tal nella sembianza sua divenne qual diverrebbe Giove, s’elli e Marte fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne. (Par. 27, 13–15)⁸¹

As has been noted, the evocation of Mars is not only to indicate the colour red, but also as an emblem of militanza, to suggest that now is the time for ‘buon zelo’ (‘good zeal’, Par. 22, 9):⁸² ‘Se io mi trascoloro non ti maravigliar, che, dicend’io, vedrai trascolorar tutti costoro. Quelli ch’usurpa in terra il luogo mio, il luogo mio, il luogo mio! che vaca nella presenza del Figliuol di Dio, fatto ha del cimitero mio cloaca del sangue e della puzza; onde ’l perverso che cadde di qua sù, là giù si placa.’ Di quel color che per lo sole avverso nube dipigne da sera e da mane, vid’io allora tutto ’l ciel cosperso; ⁸¹ ‘And now, in how it looked, this face became / what Jove would be if he and Mars were birds, / and both exchanged their plumage, white for red.’ ⁸² See Aversano, La quinta ruota, p. 116.

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The blush returns here with a thickened description, with all of nine lines dedicated to Beatrice’s blush alone, comprising three different comparisons with three different sets of references, from Ovid, to Statius, to the Bible.⁸⁴ This becomes a strongly marked somatic key that is clearly meant to involve us as readers, capturing our imagination with at least one of these varied imagistic triggers. But how, precisely, are we meant to be involved in the moment of prophecy and in the moment of Dante’s investiture as prophet himself ? The neologism, ‘trascolorare’, paired with Beatrice’s ‘trasmutare’, puts emphasis on the enormity of change of mode and mood, a change as extreme as the eclipse at Christ’s crucifixion. The passage as a whole stresses emotional contagion; Peter’s change in colour is quickly transferred to all those around him. In the case of Beatrice, this notion of contagion is magnified even further by the simile of the honest woman who feels shame for the actions of another. As Rachel Jacoff notes, Dante draws our attention to this shared change, using the verb ‘trasmutare’ twice in the space of four lines to describe both Peter and Beatrice (Par. 27, 34, 38).⁸⁵ The verb recalls the lexicon of the ‘trasumanare’ that characterizes the experience of Paradiso as a whole, an experience that is not ⁸³ ‘“If I change colour now, / don’t be amazed at that. For all of these, / as I go on, you’ll see change colour, too. / He who on earth had robbed me of my place, / my place, my place—which wherefore, in the sight / of God’s dear Son, stands vacant now—has made / of my own burial ground a shit hole / reeking of blood and pus. In this the sod / who fell from here down there takes sheer delight.” / With that same colour that a cloud takes on, / morning or evening, when it meets the sun, / I saw, in every part, the heavens flush. / And as some innocent—herself quite clean / in conscience—when she notes another’s fault / may still, on hearing this, grow chaste and shy, / so Beatrice changed in countenance. / So, too, I think, the heavens were once eclipsed / when Utmost Power submitted to the Cross.’ For analysis of the images evoked here, see Nick Havely, Dante and the Franciscans. Poverty and the Papacy in the ‘Commedia’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 168–80. ⁸⁴ Ovid, Metamorphoses III, 183–5. Hollander observes: ‘That blush fits the context of the blush of shame attributed to Beatrice in verse 34.’ See his gloss to Par. 27, 28–30 in his 2007 edition. For an analysis of the reversed citation in Paradiso 18, 64–7 with respect to the description of blushing in Metamorphoses VI, 44–52, see Alessia Carrai, ‘Le Muse nelle invocazioni del “Paradiso”’, Lettere italiane, 70.1 (2018): 16–37. ⁸⁵ See Rachel Jacoff, ‘Dante, Geremia e la problematica profetica’ in Dante e la Bibbia. Atti del Convegno internazionale promosso da ‘Biblia’ (Firenze, 26–27–28 settembre 1986), ed. Giovanni Barblan (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1988), pp. 113–23 (p. 116).

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so much about transcending the human as it about entering into a new form of community and relation to that community.⁸⁶ The verb ‘erubescere’ occurs six times in the Vulgate version of the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah makes reference to the lack of shame on the part of the prostitute who does not blush (Jer. 3:3), in order to accuse false prophets, the ones who do not blush: ‘confusi sunt quia abominationem fecerunt quinimmo confusione non sunt confusi et erubescere nescierunt’ (6:15; 8:12). Rachel Jacoff links the motif of the apostasy of a people in the books of the prophets to Dante’s invectives against the state of the Church in Purgatorio 32 and in the figure of Beatrice’s blush in Paradiso 27. In Jeremiah, the blush signifies shame; lack of a blush signifies not only shamelessness but hard stubbornness, a lack of responsiveness to others. In its careful arrangement of references and images, Paradiso 27 also leans on Ovid’s description of Diana’s blush when Actaeon sees her bathing.⁸⁷ Jacoff notes that while Ovid questions Diana’s vendetta, ‘invece l’irato arrossire di Pietro è pienamente meritato e ha l’effetto di spingere il poeta a parlare pubblicamente’.⁸⁸ If the resonances of the blush in Jeremiah and Ovid point initially to shame, how do we understand the tangible anger in this passage? Is the blush in Paradiso 27 meant to signify vicarious shame, shame felt for the actions of others? The sort of shame that Jeremiah protests is lacking in the person of those responsible? The references to Jeremiah are clear, audible even, in the treble anaphoric repetition of ‘Il luogo mio’ in Peter’s speech, echoing the treble ‘Templum Domini’ in Jeremiah (7:4).⁸⁹ There is no doubt of the resonance of Jeremiah here. But I would suggest that the meaning ascribed to the reddening in Dante exceeds the meaning that the trope of reddening has in Jeremiah, though a key for that further signification that Dante ascribes to reddening may nonetheless be found in Jeremiah. There are over a hundred occurrences of the Hebrew root word shub in the book of Jeremiah. The word means ‘to turn’ or ‘to turn back’ and is used variously to describe apostasy but also the call to repentance. I would suggest that the blush in Dante connotes the possibility of a turn, of a transformative response to words and images in a social or communal context.

⁸⁶ See my Dante’s Persons. ⁸⁷ See Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ed. Niccolò Tommaseo (Turin: UTET, 1927), gloss on Par. 27, 28–30. See also Jacoff, ‘Dante, Geremia e la problematica profetica’. ⁸⁸ Jacoff, ‘Dante, Geremia e la problematica profetica’, p. 118. ⁸⁹ See Tommaseo, gloss on Par. 27, 22–4.

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Epistle XI points at the importance of discerning the divergence in the possible range of significance in the blush: Non itaque videor quemquam exacerbasse ad iugia; quin potius confusionis ruborem et in vobis et aliis, nomine solo archimandritis, per orbem dumtaxat pudor eradicatus non sit totaliter, accendisse. (Epistole XI.13)⁹⁰

Giuseppe Ledda has discussed Dante’s recall of Jeremiah’s prophetic mode in this Epistle, in a similar vein to Jacoff ’s discussion of Paradiso 27, noting Jeremiah’s emphasis on the obstinance and arrogance of avaricious priests who do not blush.⁹¹ As described here in Epistle XI, the blush, if it occurs, can indicate either shame and confusion or righteous anger in the face of injustice. The blush is understood to be a somatic reaction provoked by Dante’s words, meant to incite legitimate anger at hearing his rebukes of the corrupt clergy who are damaging the Church and leading it astray. And just before this passage that explicitly considers the reaction of the readers, Dante evokes not only the Church being pulled off course, but also the promise of God’s aid. The blush of confusion or shame would be, in this context, an insufficient reaction. So it would seem that Epistle XI could indicate a pattern for the episodes in Purgatorio 33 and Paradiso 27: denunciation of the bad leadership of the Church leads to the invocation of divine assistance forthcoming and focuses attention on Dante’s prophetic words and his prophetic investiture even as it foregrounds desired reactions to appropriately jarring and inciting words as displayed in the blush. To better understand the effects that the prophetic voice intends to provoke in these moments of investiture, we must understand the categories of the blush that are being referenced. It has been noted that while Albertus Magnus tends to treat erubescentia and confusio as synonyms, Dante ‘sembra utilizzare in modo originale la possibilità di graduare e sfumare il concetto di “vergogna”’.⁹² In fact, if we consider the entire series of discussions of blushing that can be found in Dante’s works, we may see that the poet makes very subtle distinctions, linking blushing to different possible states of the soul. And ⁹⁰ ‘It would seem, then, that rather than having incited people to anger, I have provoked only blushes of confusion (if, that is, shame has not been utterly eradicated from the world) in you and in others, archimandrites in name only.’ For a discussion of the prophetic voice in Epistle XI that also refers to the broader context of the other letters, see Honess in Four Political Letters, and particularly the introduction, pp. 1–41. ⁹¹ Giuseppe Ledda, ‘Modelli biblici e profetismo nelle “Epistole” di Dante’ in Sotto il cielo delle scritture. Bibbia, retorica e letteratura religiosa (secc. XIII–XVI), ed. Carlo Delcorno and Giovanni Baffetti (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2009), pp. 57–78 (pp. 75–6). ⁹² ‘[…] seems to use the possibility of gradations and shadings within the concept of “shame” in an original way.’ Carlo Delcorno, ‘Lettura di “Purgatorio” XXXI’, Studi danteschi, 71 (2006): 87–120 (p. 99).

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these are not only gradations of the concept of shame; a variety of states of the soul can be shown forth, perceived, and shared via the mechanisms of the blush. Furthermore, as we have seen, the blush works on levels both immediate and subject to interpretation and analysis. On an intuitive level, a blush can be shared even where the second individual is not directly involved but a transgression has been perceived. Second, an observer of someone who blushes may seek to interpret the sudden marked change as a reaction of shame, anger, confusion, or simply active involvement. Both blushing and seeking to interpret a blush are activities that impel the viewer or reader to become part of or to demarcate a group. From Epistle XI we might understand that the blush is induced by words and can indicate shame or confusion in a first instance, but ideally will indicate just anger. To comprehend that ideal, we must look not only at all the references in the negative, in Jeremiah where the blush does not occur, but try instead to focus on what the ‘positive’ blush enacts and shows forth.⁹³ Dante discusses the blush at length in the Convivio: Lo pudore è uno ritraimento d’animo da laide cose, con paura di cadere in quelle; sì come vedemo ne le vergini e ne le donne buone e ne li adolescenti, che tanto sono pudici, che non solamente là dove richesti o tentati sono di fallare, ma dove pure alcuna imaginazione di venereo compimento avere si puote, tutti si dipingono ne la faccia di palido o di rosso colore. Onde dice lo sopra notato poeta ne lo allegato libro primo di Tebe, che quando Aceste, nutrice d’Argia e di Deifile, figlie d’Adrasto rege, le menò dinanzi da li occhi del santo padre ne la presenza de li due peregrini, cioè Polinice e Tideo, le vergini palide e rubicunde si fecero, e li loro occhi fuggiro da ogni altrui sguardo, e solo ne la paterna faccia, quasi come sicuri, si tennero. Oh quanti falli rifrena esto pudore! quante disoneste cose e dimande fa tacere! quante disoneste cupiditati raffrena! quante male tentazioni non pur ne la pudica persona diffida, ma eziandio in quello che la guarda! quante laide parole ritene! (Convivio IV, xxv, 7–9)⁹⁴ ⁹³ As Delcorno remarks, ‘l’erubescentia è anche considerata importantissima come segno di contritio cordis’. See ‘Lettura di “Purgatorio” XXXI’, p. 101. ⁹⁴ ‘Modesty is the recoiling of the mind from things which are ugly for fear of falling into them, as we see in virgins, good women, and adolescents who are so modest that their faces become pallid or tinged with the color of red not only in those instances when they are induced or tempted to commit a fault, but even when some act of sensual pleasure is merely conceived in the imagination. Thus the abovementioned poet says in the first book of the Thebaid, just cited, that when Aceste, the nurse of Argia and Deiphyle, daughters of King Adrastus, brought them before the eyes of their noble father in the presence of two strangers, namely Polynices and Tydeus, the virgins became pallid and flushed, and their eyes

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The modesty in the blush of the two virgins, utterly innocent of any shameful act, is the sort that reins in the cupidity of others. That modest blush is not only a sign of the restraint of the blusher, but in fact acts on others, restraining ‘quello che la guarda’. Such somatic virtue impels corresponding virtue. The psychosomatic transformation of the one who blushes has the ability, Dante suggests here, to transform the one who witnesses this visible performance of virtue. What then, of Beatrice’s blush as she hears of extremely ugly acts, of the ‘cimitero mio cloaca / del sangue e de la puzza’ (Par. 27, 25–6)? Is it to be compared to the two virgins? Or does she share in what Peter clearly casts as anger: ‘ond’ io sovente arrosso e disfavillo’ (54)? Beatrice’s blush does not halt Peter’s depiction of ugly things, but rather the ugly language used here is understood to be part of the prophetic provocation, and Dante is urged to ‘apri la bocca, / e non asconder quel ch’io non ascondo’ (‘speak openly / and do not hide what I don’t hide from you’ 65–6).⁹⁵ There has been a fascinating critical debate on the nature of Beatrice’s change here that I understand, as do the majority of critics, as a flushing red. D’Ancona and others have presumed that Beatrice becomes pale, rather than reddening.⁹⁶ Umberto Bosco argues for reddening, referring to the Convivio passage for support and commenting that: ‘Certo il pudore verginale è altra cosa dal sentimento che turba qui Beatrice: ma quel che la collega alle figlie di Adrasto è il fatto che l’una e le altre si turbano non per colpa ma solo per immaginare una colpa.’⁹⁷ But I wonder, is Beatrice only imagining an ugly action, or is she, like Peter, filled with righteous anger? Is she only imagining the fault or is she already reacting to it? When Giuseppe Giacalone proposes that, ‘Qui Beatrice è figura della Vergine, che ai piedi della croce si sbiancò nel volto, trasfigurata dal dolore per la morte di Cristo’,⁹⁸ I wonder, what of Beatrice’s second transformation in Purgatorio 33, in which she reddens and speaks Christ’s words, not Mary’s? It is she who then goes on to pronounce prophecy and to authorize Dante in his prophetic role, the first of three authorizations, to

averted the glances of everyone and turned upon their father’s face alone, as if reassured. O how many faults does this modesty curb! How many dishonorable deeds and entreaties does it silence! How many dishonorable desires does it bridle! How many evil temptations does it check, not only in the person who is modest but in the one who looks on him! How many foul words does it restrain!’ ⁹⁵ For a discussion of the ways in which this investiture echoes not only the words of Cacciaguida in Paradiso 17, 127–9, but also those of Ezekiel, see Aversano, La quinta ruota, pp. 120–2. ⁹⁶ Alessandro D’Ancona, Scritti danteschi (Florence: Sansoni, 1913), p. 460. ⁹⁷ Gloss to Par. 27, 28–36 in Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ed. Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio, 3 vols. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1979). ⁹⁸ Gloss to Par. 27, 35–6 in Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ed. Giuseppe Giacalone, 3 vols. (Rome: Signorelli, 1968).

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be followed by Cacciaguida and then Peter. These varied readings of Beatrice’s colour in Paradiso 27 have interpreted that colour in different ways, but often somehow separate Beatrice’s role from that of Peter and that of Dante. Have we been limited by thinking of feminine shame and male anger, applying the former to Beatrice and the latter to Peter?⁹⁹ I am inclined to think that the comparison to the ‘donna onesta’ in Paradiso 27 is limited in its scope and does not intend to circumscribe Beatrice within the realm of modesty and feminine shame, but rather is meant to suggest the blush as model for our best human capacity to be moved to emotion and to motion and to move others with words and with bodily examples. It is a model of kinesic empathy and intelligence. Beatrice, in this analysis, is an example of the prophetic mode, a model for Dante in his investiture and exhortation to speak, and a model for readers who would respond to prophetic words in the way that Epistle XI intends. As the comparison with Purgatorio 33 reveals, Beatrice’s face shows forth the transformation from distress to hope in and with righteous anger, the sort of anger that aligns the prophet with God’s own imminent vengeance. The blush figures the transformative power of prophecy in a communal context, effected through the word and psychosomatic image. Psalm 78 reads: ‘Fai ricadere sui nostri vicini … l’oltraggio che ti hanno fatto, Signore.’ This reversal is what is at issue in Beatrice’s transcoloured face. And it is here that the Ovidian reference to Diana’s blush in Paradiso 27, ‘di quel color che per lo sole avverse / nube dipigne da sera e da mane’ (28–9), springs to new relevance. This reference in Dante, I might suggest, is not so much about Diana’s shame at being seen by Actaeon as the fact that that shame will be turned back on Actaeon himself. It is ‘pudor’, if we read a bit further in Ovid’s text past the description of Diana’s reddened face, that prevents the transfigured Actaeon from running home. Diana’s ‘pudor’, pivoting through the moment of her anger and vengeance, has become Actaeon’s own. The red colour that tinges the heavens responds to the blood shed by the martyred popes. It is not only a colour that accompanies prophecy; it incarnates prophecy. Beatrice’s face, along with the faces of all the blessed here, shows forth the reversal from loss to retribution, a reversal that Dante’s text, speaking as an anti-Actaeon (to return to Rachel Jacoff ’s argument), not only narrates and reports, but also propagates into the world.¹⁰⁰

⁹⁹ According to Giorgio Inglese, for example, ‘La commozione della beata, ritratta così finemente nella sua femminilità, non richiede (anzi, non sopporta) soprasensi allegorici.’ Gloss to Par. 27, 34. Carlo Delcorno, on the other hand, notes in Beatrice’s appearance those traits of a prelate or a bishop, potentially employing ‘parole grosse’: Carlo Delcorno, ‘Beatrice predicante (“Par.” XXIX, 85–126)’, L’Alighieri, 51.35 (2010): 111–31. ¹⁰⁰ Jacoff, ‘Dante, Geremia e la problematica profetica’.

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In the Egerton 943 manuscript, folio 174r depicts this scene by showing Peter, James, and John, accompanied by Adam (Figure 6.1). What Anna Pegoretti calls the ‘atmosfera trasfigurata’ is depicted by a stark change in the background upon which the characters appear.¹⁰¹ In the previous image (f. 173r), the same figures appear, along with Dante and Beatrice, within a blue circle set within rings of a lighter blue that become lighter in colour as they grow farther from the centre. Dante and Beatrice’s figures, shown from waist up, emerge from the ring nearest the centre, while Peter, James, John, and Adam’s heads emerge from the blue above, their ingression into the space marked by streaks of a gold colour. The depiction of Peter’s invective fully alters this atmosphere; the blue has been streaked with shades of grey, like smoke, that surrounds the heads of the four. The grey streaks down menacingly, almost tentacle-shaped, towards the heads of Dante and Beatrice. The faces of all six figures seem subtly tainted by the grey that surrounds them. Beatrice’s colour—usually delicately rosy in the other illustrations—is here gently touched with the same grey that darkens Peter’s face directly above her.

Figure 6.1 Paradiso Canto 27 © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 174r (detail). ¹⁰¹ Pegoretti, Indagine, p. 257.

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Her alignment with Peter is perfect, placing her in direct relation with the saint above her. Her gaze is directed, piercingly, upon the viewer. We are impelled to notice and to decry the horror to which Peter testifies.

A note in lieu of conclusion Modern readers have sometimes been startled by the anger that asserts itself here, so close to the end of Dante’s journey to God. Dante’s heaven is not always peaceful. But it is in the visualization of these varied bodily signs that demarcate stark alterations of the affective atmosphere that the reader is encouraged to recognize a person, a group, and a place. It is then from that practised participation within that group that the reader may join in the final gestures of the poem, gestures that are foregrounded as necessary to the genesis of the poem itself: vinca tua guardia i movimenti umani! Vedi Beatrice con quanti beati per li miei prieghi ti chiudon le mani! (Par. 33, 37–9)¹⁰²

One of the final gestures of the poem, even before Bernard’s affectionately excessive indicating upward to the divine vision, is described in this invocation to the Virgin Mary. The Virgin is invited to see and be moved by a congruence of gestures, by many hands joined in prayer. Beatrice, along with the other blessed, joins her hands in prayer so that Dante might accede to the vision of God and might preserve his ‘affetti’ ‘sani’ (36, 35)¹⁰³ in the wake of such an experience. These choral gestures of supplication so please the Virgin that she turns to intercede on Dante’s behalf, for both his vision and his capacity to harness his ‘affetti’ afterwards to generate the poem. And so it is that many hands, closed in prayer, enable us to come full circle, from the beginning of the poem to its elucidation of its genesis at the end. The Egerton illustrates this on folio 185r, in which Dante and Bernard raise their hands in prayer from the bottom of the illumination, while Beatrice and other souls, on a higher level, extend their hands in prayer (Figure 6.2). Mary is located above Dante and Bernard in the middle of the image, with Christ ¹⁰² ‘Watch, and defeat the impulses of man. / See! Beatrice with so many saints / closes her hands in prayers along with mine.’ ¹⁰³ ‘healthy in all his heart intends’

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above her surrounded by light rings. The scene resonates with Last Judgement scenes such as the one in the Scrovegni Chapel, where hosts of the saved press their hands together in prayer just above Enrico Scrovegni, who kneels before the Virgin and offers her the Chapel, aided by the monk (in Bernard’s relative position) who supports it with him. Above the Virgin, Christ is surrounded by colourful rings. The creation of the chapel and the creation of the poem are both depicted in the framework of this choral gesture of multitudes of hands pressed together in prayer. This image of Beatrice in a group of beati who all together close their hands in prayer as framing the creation of the work of

Figure 6.2 Paradiso Canto 33 © The British Library Board. Egerton MS 943, f. 185r (detail).

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art seems an appropriate place to close what can only be a first foray into the spaces, images, and worlds alluded to in the gestures of the Commedia. I have suggested that attention to the gestures of the Commedia may offer a way in to reading the poem as if gestural scenes were elements in a vast visual programme displayed across an architectural space. We can imagine the reader of the poem like a worshipper in the Baptistery of San Giovanni or the Scrovegni Chapel, one who would be accustomed to a certain choreography of viewing that might shift from an all-encompassing view of the whole upon entering, to a more close-up detailed viewing of individual scenes, perhaps in narrative succession, followed by a broader view again, in which patterns, parallels, and correspondences and oppositions between scenes might come to light. The reader of the Commedia, in the same way, is drawn to dwell on certain potent gestural encounters in the text as illuminated by their resonance within a network of images that exist both within and beyond the boundaries of the poem. For early illustrators, gestures present a primary mode into reflection on sin and vice, on penitential processes, and paradisiacal affects in Dante’s poem. These gestural encounters, acting as ‘imagines agentes’, stick powerfully in the reader’s visual memory when they find certain correspondences with known iconographies. Readers may then track parallels and divergences from these known images, eventually locating the gestural encounter in a certain affective and spiritual space. In correspondence with the presence of exempla, such as the vices and the virtues visible in the Scrovegni Chapel or legible in Dante’s text, the single gestural encounter is weighted with significance drawn from its relationships to these referents. In a necessarily limited set of case studies, I have shown how certain kinesically sticky gestures in the poem establish themselves as points of meditation. They become nodes of signification in their embeddedness in a network of related gestures both within the poem and in the poem’s cultural ecosystem, made up of texts, visual art, and devotional practice. It is my hope that what I have offered in these pages can be the beginning of further work to excavate the evocations of affects rendered visible in the description of bodily signs, and to read the Commedia as, also, visual art.

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Index Actaeon 179, 183 Adam 184 affective atmospheres 133, 152, 160, 174–175, 185 Agamben, Giorgio 14–15 Alderotti, Taddeo 69 Alypius 27 Apollo 144 Aquinas, Thomas, Saint 22–23, 25–26, 132–133, 139n Aristotle 20, 70, 90, 175n Assisi 53 Augustine, Saint 6, 10–11, 27 Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence 12, 43, 50–52, 64, 85, 95–96, 187 Bartolomeo da Trento 63–64 bas-reliefs 10–11, 32, 45, 52, 62, 99 Beatrice 4, 13, 19–20, 22–24, 40, 47, 77–78, 135–136, 138–150, 152–157, 161–162, 167, 172–179, 182–186 Benvenuto da Imola 88, 121, 169 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint 4, 132–133, 151, 163, 185 Bertran de Born 49 blushing 10, 161, 172–183 Bonaventure, Saint 132–133 Bonconte 45–46, 79, 83 Botticelli, Sandro 13, 45, 62, 117–120, 124–125, 141–142, 144–145, 148–149 British Museum Add. MS. 19587 9, 46 Brunetto Latini 28–30, 69, 137 Rettorica 28 Tresor 69 Butler, Judith 73 Cacciaguida 41, 135–138, 140, 142, 157, 167–168, 183 Caiaphas 99–100, 111 Cangrande 167 Caravaggio 41 Carlo Martello 158–159 Cato 3, 71

Cavalcanti, Cavalcante de’ 55–57, 74 Cavalcanti, Guido 73n, 74–75, 77–78 Cavarero, Adriana 91–92, 142 Chanter, Peter 33, 35, 122 De penitentia et partibus eius 33–34 Christ 2, 36–37, 43, 46, 50, 51, 53, 56–58, 64, 66, 106, 111, 126–127, 129, 151, 169, 170–171, 176, 185–186 Cicero 27–28 De inventione 28 Cimabue 42 Convivio 4–6, 20n, 181–182 Cortona MS 705 61 Courtauld Gallery 148 Cunizza 162–164, 166, 168, 170 David 58–59 De modo orandi corporaliter sancti Dominici 34–35, 57–58, 121–123 Diana 179, 183 Dido 167 Dominic, Saint 34–35, 57–58, 63, 65, 121–123 Duccio 53, 88 Egerton 943 Commedia 9, 46–47, 50, 59, 62, 106–108, 111, 115–118, 142–143, 147n, 184–186 ekphrasis 10, 58, 99 Elisabeth 94–96, 100 embrace 89, 91, 94, 95, 101, 102 emotional community 75 Enrico I 84 Epistole 161, 167, 171, 179, 180, 181, 183 Ezzellino III da Romano 162 Farinata 12, 55–56, 70, 74, 88–89 Federigo Novello 86 Filippo III 84 Folco 156, 163–168, 170 Forese Donati 132 Francis, Saint 30, 36, 53, 65, 122–123

INDE X Gabriel 10–11, 46, 58 Gallerani, Andrea 65, 122 Ganymede 167, 169 Giotto 2, 42, 45, 51, 53, 88, 96–98, 99, 106, 111, 126, 128, 130, 186 Giovanni di Mailly 63–64 Giovanni di Paolo 144, 152 Giugo il Certosino 122 greeting 91, 96, 136 Grosseteste 70 Guido da Siena 65 Henry VII 167 Holkham misc. 48 36, 46, 101–102, 117–118 Hugh of Saint Victor 31 Iacopo da Varazze 63–64 Iacopo del Cassero 79, 81, 83 Iacopo della Lana 70, 163n Inferno 2 94 Inferno 3 21–22 Inferno 4 22–23, 70, 88 Inferno 5 130, 132, 155 Inferno 6 57 Inferno 9 161 Inferno 10 55–56, 70 Inferno 14 163 Inferno 15 137 Inferno 21 25 Inferno 23 25 Inferno 25 124–125 Inferno 29 49 Jacobus de Voragine 110 James, Saint 184 Jeremiah 179, 181 John, Saint [Evangelist] 37, 72, 184 John the Baptist, Saint 51, 64, 148–149 Joseph 51, 64, 106, 108 Joshua 169–170 Judas 94, 96, 100 kinesic intelligence 15, 31, 37, 113, 114, 160, 173 kiss 92 Lambert di Saint Omer 44 Lapidazione di Santo Stefano, San Lorenzo in Palatio 111

199

Leon Battista Alberti 148 Leonardo da Vinci 15, 142 limbo 68–69, 71, 82, 88–90 Malacoda 25 Mantua 89–90, 101 Manzoni 41 Marsyas 144 Mary, Virgin 10–11, 45–46, 50–51, 54, 56, 58, 61, 65–66, 92–96, 100, 102, 104–108, 113, 117, 126, 142–143, 151, 163, 175, 182, 185–186 Mary Magdalene 38, 148, 163, 170 Meditations on the Life of Christ 12, 36–37, 49 memory 16, 40–41, 47n, 48, 50, 63, 67, 77n, 82n, 83, 99n, 105, 110, 145, 170, 187 Michal 59–60 Monarchia 72 mosaics 41–44, 50–52, 56, 85, 95–96 Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic, see De modo orandi Oderisi 56–57, 82 Ovid 2, 178, 179, 183 Padua 2, 34, 42–43, 45, 125 Palinurus 86 pallor 10, 23–24, 175, 182 Paradiso 2 146 Paradiso 5 154–155 Paradiso 6 166 Paradiso 8 79, 92, 158, 162 Paradiso 9 79, 156, 158–159, 161–172 Paradiso 10 60 Paradiso 17 48, 69 Paradiso 18 4 Paradiso 20 148–150 Paradiso 21 92–93 Paradiso 22 177 Paradiso 23 151–152 Paradiso 24 72, 167 Paradiso 26 140–141 Paradiso 27 173, 177–178, 182–183 Paradiso 31 136, 163 Paradiso 33 4, 94, 135, 151, 171, 185 Paris 82–83 Paris Arsenal 8530 111

200

INDE X

Parnassus 144 Peter 72, 167, 177–178, 182–185 pilgrimage 75, 123–124 Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena 65 Pisano, Giovanni 45, 99 Pisano, Nicola 96 Pisistratus 107–108, 111, 113 Planctus Mariae 37–38 Pseudo-Bonaventure 36 Purgatorio 1 3, 4n, 46 Purgatorio 3 16–17 Purgatorio 5 12, 45, 68, 71–73, 78–81, 87, 90 Purgatorio 6 12, 80–81, 85–90, 93, 95, 160 Purgatorio 7 41, 83–85, 93–94 Purgatorio 8 85, 93, 125, 124, 169, 124, 169 Purgatorio 9 167 Purgatorio 10 3, 11, 31–32, 46, 49, 54, 56, 58, 60, 99, 116, 119 Purgatorio 12 32, 56–57, 82 Purgatorio 15 106–109, 111 Purgatorio 16 33 Purgatorio 17 92 Purgatorio 18 92, 94–95 Purgatorio 19 92, 115 Purgatorio 21 7–8 Purgatorio 22 117 Purgatorio 23 122–123, 125 Purgatorio 24 113–114, 125 Purgatorio 25 132 Purgatorio 26 92 Purgatorio 27 3, 4, 138–139 Purgatorio 33 173, 176 Quintilian 27 Rahab 168–170 reaching 10, 35, 37, 65, 86, 91, 95, 100, 106, 108, 111, 113–123, 125–130, 134, 137, 140, 147

Reginald, Blessed 65 rhetoric 28, 30, 43, 67n, 162–163 Roman de la Rose 63 San Clemente al Laterano 43–44 Sant’Apollinare in Classe 41 Santa Croce in Gerusalemme 56 Satan 50 Savonarola 145 Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel) 2, 12, 42–43, 45, 51–52, 63, 95–98, 100–101, 106, 111, 125, 127–129, 186–187 Scrovegni, Enrico 186 smiles 7–8, 10, 21, 111, 135–136, 138–140, 143, 147, 149–150, 165–166 Sordello 84–85, 88–92, 94, 101–102 Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis 104, 171 Statius 7–10, 26, 62, 141, 178 Stephen, Saint 105, 109–112 Stephen of Bourbon 104–105 ‘Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute’ 84–85 Tristano 82–83 Ugolino 91, 141 Vincent of Beauvais 42 Virgil 3–4, 7–10, 16, 22–23, 25, 32–33, 46–47, 49, 54–55, 57, 67–68, 70–73, 81, 83, 86–87, 90–91, 94, 101–102, 106, 108, 110, 134–136, 138–139, 141, 143, 169 Aeneid 7, 67–68, 86–87, 109, 134–135, 169 Visitation 95–102 Vita nova 12, 19, 22–23, 39–41, 75, 77–78, 131 Yates Thompson Commedia 117–118, 144, 147, 152