Is that Dante?

The Museo of Bargello in Florence is one of those museums less visited by tourists! It has an extensive sculpture collection, including some of the best work by Donatello, Verrocchio, Michelangelo, Cellini and Giambologna. It has a collection of Renaissance medals on the second floor, which includes some wonderful work by Pisanello, a charming collection of Medieval household implements such as combs, hair pins, mirrors and ivory caskets in the so-called Sala degli Avori, or Ivory Room.

This building itself was the official residence of the Captain of the People, later the Podesta` of Medieval Florence, but also as a prison where many convicts awaiting execution would spend their last days. 

In this museum there is a room on the first floor, the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, the place where the convicts would spend their final hours before beginning their journey to the scaffold. Vasari informs us that Giotto (1267-1337), a famous Italian painter, acclaimed for the cycle of Saint Francis in Assisi and for the Arena Chapel in Padua, painted on the altar wall of the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene a portrait of his friend Dante Alighieri, the writer of the Divine Comedy. 

Portrait of Dante, 1337
Fresco, Florence

In 1839 a group of Italian art-lovers, having read this same passage in Vasari's Lives of the Artists, applied for permission to search for the portrait underneath the coat of whitewash that had meanwhile been applied to the walls. They uncovered a largely ruined cycle of frescoes depicting, amongst other subjects, Hell and Paradise. Below the figure of Christ they found the group described by Vasari complete with Giottos's portrait of Dante. 

Unfortunately, the face of the supposed poet was badly damaged. Dante's characteristic profile was quickly returned to him by simple and pragmatic exigency of a restoration policy of the time.

Therefore today its authenticity is more than dubious! 

You know the best thing to do it is just to go and check with your own eyes next time in Florence!!!

A presto!