Michael Angelo in his own poetical compositions imitated Petrarch rather than Dantè; yet it is sufficiently obvious throughout his works in painting, that the poetical mind of Dantè influenced his feelings. The Demons in the Last Judgment,1 with all their mixed and various passions, may find a prototype in La Divina Commedia. The figures rising from the grave, mark his study of L' Inferno and Il Purgatorio; and the subject of the Brazen Serpent, in the Sistine Chapel, must remind every reader of Canto xxv dell' Inferno, where the flying serpents, the writhing and contortions of the human body from envenomed wounds, are described with pathos and horror; and the execution of Haman, in the opposite angle of the same ceiling, is doubtless designed from these lines: Poi piovve dentro all' alta fantasia, etc.2 The edition of Dantè he used, was a large folio with Landino's commentary and upon the broad margin of the leaves he designed, with a pen and ink, all the interesting subjects in the poem.3 (pp. 228-33.) [Hints from Dante in Michael Angelo's 'Last Judgment'] The most serious exception made to the general composition of Michael Angelo's Last Judgment by his contemporaries, was that of violating decorum, in representing so many figures without drapery. The first person who made this objection was the Pope's Master of the Ceremonies, who, on seeing the picture when three parts finished, and being asked his opinion, told his Holiness that it was more fit for a brothel than the Pope's chapel. This circumstance caused Michael Angelo to introduce his portrait into the picture with ass's ears and not overlooking the duties of his temporal office, he represented him as Master of the Ceremonies in the lower world, ordering, and directing the disposal of the damned; and, to heighten the character, he is entwined with a serpent, Dante's attribute of Minos.1 It is recorded, that the Monsignore petitioned the Pope to have this portrait taken out of the ... 1[In the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican.] 2 [Duppa here prints Purg. xvii. 25-30, with Boyd's version in a footnote.] This book was possessed by Antonio Montauti, a sculptor and architect in Florence, who, being appointed architect to St. Peter's, removed to Rome, and shipped his marbles, bronzes, studies, and other effects, at Leghorn, for Cività Vecchia, among which was this edition of Dantè; in the voyage the vessel foundered at sea, and was lost. [In a previous note Duppa gives a brief account of Dante, and translates Boccaccio's description of his person. He adds Michael Angelo, with the Florentine Academicians and others petitioned Leo X. to remove the remains of Dantè from Ravenna, where he was buried, to deposit them in his native city, and erect a monument to honour his memory. .. This petition was dated October the 20th, 1519; but was not granted' (p. 232).] 4[Cary's rendering of Inf. v. 4-12 is here quoted, with the original in a footnote.] picture, and that of the painter put in its stead; to which the Pope is said to have replied, Had you been placed in Purgatory, there might have been some remedy, but from Hell nulla est redemptio.' . . . Another objection made to the general design, by critics less prejudiced, is the introduction of a boat to convey the condemned souls to their place of torment; the idea being manifestly borrowed from pagan theology. The objection would seem to be well founded; but . . . while the Centaurs and Sphingi of Tasso, and the Gorgons and Hydras of Milton, are tolerated in the greatest epic poems of the Christian world, I shall offer no apology for the Charon of Dante and Michael Angelo. 1825. TINENT. (pp. 281-4.) MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS AND OPINIONS ON THE CON [Dante at Ravenna-His tomb] 2 Ravenna.-Under the kind protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, here Dante found an asylum from the malevolence of his enemies, and here he ended a life embittered with many sorrows, as he has pathetically told to posterity, after having gone about like a mendicant; wandering over almost every part to which our language extends, shewing against my will the wound with which fortune has smitten me, and which is so often imputed to his illdeserving on whom it is inflicted.' The precise time of his death is not accurately ascertained; but it was either in July or September of the year 1321. His friend in adversity, Guido da Polenta, mourned his loss, and testified his sorrow and respect by a sumptuous funeral, and, it is said, intended to have erected a monument to his memory; but the following year contending factions deprived him of the sovereignty which he had held for more than half a century; and he in his turn like the great poet whom he protected, died in exile. I believe, however, that the tomb, with an inscription purporting to have been written by Dante himself," was erected at the time of his decease, and, that his portrait in basrelief was afterwards added by Bernardo Bembo, in the year 1483, who, at that time, was a Senator and Podestà of the Venetian Republic. The bas-relief was probably copied from a portrait of Dante by Giotto, but whether any such picture now exists I am ignorant; 1 The boatman in this part of the composition is designed from the Inferno of Dan tè. [Inf. iii. 109-11.] 2[Conv. i. 3 (Cary's translation).] 3[It was on Sept. 14.] [Duppa here gives a sketch of the tomb, with the inscription.] [The Giotto portrait in the Bargello at Florence was not discovered until 1840.] but this bas-relief and all the bad portraits which I have ever seen of Dante, seem to have had one common origin. (pp. 147-8.) ROBERT FELLOWES (1771-1847) [Robert Fellowes of Shottesham Hall, Norfolk, was born in 1771. He was educated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford (B.A. 1796). He was editor of the Critical Review from 1804 to 1811, and was the author of various miscellaneous works, political and theological. In 1806 he published a translation from the Latin of Milton's Familiar Epistles, among which is included the letter to Buonmattai containing Milton's avowal of his delight in reading Dante and Petrarch. Fellowes, who was a liberal benefactor of Edinburgh University, and of the London University, of which he was one of the promoters, died in London in 1847.] 1806. FAMILIAR EPISTLES OF JOHN MILTON, TRANSLATED.—LETTER TO BENEDETTO BUONMATTAI, FROM FLORENCE, Sept. 10, 1638. I [Dante and Petrarch among the authors eagerly read by Milton] WILL now mention the favourable opportunity which you have, if you wish to embrace it, of obliging foreigners, among whom there is no one at all conspicuous for genius or for elegance who does not make the Tuscan language his delight, and indeed consider it as an essential part of education, particularly if he be only slightly tinctured with the literature of Greece or of Rome. I, who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in the stream of those languages, but, in proportion to my years, have swallowed the most copious drafts, can yet sometimes retire with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others; nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent wave of Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent my visiting with delight the stream of the Arno, and the hills of Faesolae.1 (Milton's Prose Works, ed. Bohn, 1848, vol. iii. p. 497.) ROBERT BLAND (c. 1779-1825) [Robert Bland, who was born about 1779, was educated at Harrow (where he was afterwards for some years assistant master) and at Pembroke College, Cambridge (B.A. 1802). After holding for a time the appointment of minister to the English Church at Amsterdam, he accepted, in 1813, the curacy of Prittlewell in [For the original, see vol. i. p. 124.] Essex, which he exchanged in 1816 for that of Kenilworth. He died at Leamington in 1825. Bland had a considerable reputation as a classical scholar. His best known work, Translations, chiefly from the Greek Anthology; with Tales and Miscellaneous Poems, was published in collaboration with John Herman Merivale in 1806, and received a complimentary notice from Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (see below, p. 190); a second and enlarged edition was published in 1813, under the title of Collections from the Greek Anthology, and from the Pastoral, Elegiac and Dramatic Poets of Greece; and a third edition appeared in 1833. Several references to Dante are introduced into this work. Bland contributed to the Quarterly Review in 1814 an article on the literary histories of Italy by Ginguenè and Sismondi, which contains an interesting criticism of the Divina Commedia, together with translations of sundry passages in terza rima.] 1806. TRANSLATIONS CHIEFLY FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, WITH TALES AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. I From Bianor the Bithynian. [Parallels to the savagery of Dante's Ugolino] N Thebes the sons of Oedipus are laid; This shocking instance of posthumous hatred is not unexampled in the superstitious annals of our own country. I remember to have somewhere seen an account of a Danish and a Saxon warrior who fell by mutual wounds, and by some accident were interred in the same tomb. A century afterwards their bodies were found grappling together as if in desperate fight, and covered with the blood that flowed from a thousand wounds but newly given and received. This bears some analogy to that most horrible description in Dante, where Hugolino is seen enjoying his savage repast on the head of his yet living enemy. (pp. 50, 139-40.) 1813. COLLECTIONS FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, AND FROM THE PASTORAL, ELEGIAC, AND DRAMATIC POETS OF GREECE. [The inscription over the gate of Dante's Hell] True taste refuses all accommodation with fashion, every attempt at a composition or compromise, and sooner than yield in her pretensions, contents herself with obscurity, until the times themselves shall come round and bow to her jurisdiction. The author who aspires to after ages, should take leave of the age in which he lives. To be drawn into the vortex of fashionable writing, is to pass that gate on which is inscribed Voi che intrate, lasciate ogni speranza. 1 (Preface,2 pp. lvii-viii, ed. 1833.) [Sappho and Dante contrasted] 3 The fire and enthusiasm, which so strongly mark the writings and pourtray the character of Sappho, appear in none of her works more unequivocally than in this little fragment. It has the appearance of a burst of indignation at some homespun, mighty good sort of woman, who had neither a soul susceptible of poetry herself, nor the sense to admire, nor the candour to allow of it in others. This is a description of persons which has always been severely handled by poets; and the stigma of contempt with which they are branded by Sappho, is a luxury to what they are sentenced to undergo by Dante 'Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi,' &c.* Those miserables, who never truly lived. No record of their names is left on high; Mercy and Justice spurn them, and refuse. 1814. April. QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I. MONDI'S LITERARY HISTORY OF ITALY. [Criticism of the Divina Commedia] GINGUENÉ AND SIS If ever a poet, in any age or country, has elevated himself by his natural genius to a height which disdains the application of all the ordinary rules of measurement, it is assuredly Dante. His poem, that amazing monument of unrivalled powers, can be judged by itself alone; and while the critic laboriously traces a few faint marks of imitation in the spirit of the age, in the works of worthless and forgotten contemporaries, or lastly in the more splendid and durable models of antiquity, he must confess with some surprise, at the close of his examination, how little he has been able to [Inf. iii. 9, loosely quoted.] 2[This passage does not appear in the original edition (1806); it was added in the second edition (1813).] [That beginning κατθανοῖσα δὲ κεῖσ ̓.] 4[Inf. iii. 64 ff.] 5 [The lines translated are Inf. iii. 64, 49-51.] "[Review of Ginguené's Histoire Littéraire d'Italie, and Sismondi's Histoire de la Littérature du Midi de l'Europe.] |