Marco Lettieri
Word and Image in Alfonso d’Aragona’s Manuscript Edition of the Divina Commedia studi 43
studi 43
Marco Lettieri
Word and Image in Alfonso d’Aragona’s Manuscript Edition of the Divina Commedia
Società
Editrice Fiorentina
© 2021 Società Editrice Fiorentina via Aretina, 298 - 50136 Firenze tel. 055 5532924 info@sefeditrice.it www.sefeditrice.it isbn: 978-88-6032-602-7 issn: 2035-4363 Proprietà letteraria riservata Riproduzione, in qualsiasi forma, intera o parziale, vietata Images: courtesy of The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 36
Table of Contents
7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 Physical Description of the Manuscript
15
22
35
36 39 46 49 56
61
62 64 69 74
85
86 89
Chapter 1. «Visibile parlare» «Art and Scholasticism» and «The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas» Chapter 2. Inferno Canto 1: The Three Beasts Canto 5: Minos and the Colour Red Canto 8: Dante and Virgil, Intimacy and Companionship Canto 13: Suicide and the Renaissance Canto 33: Ugolino: The Horrifying and the Painful Chapter 3. Purgatorio Canto 2: The Letter “P” Canto 10: The Nonvisual of the «Visibile Parlare» Canto 18: «Acedia» and the Renaissance Canto 22: Dante Rises above Virgil Chapter 4. Paradiso Canto 6: Politics and the Roman Empire Canto 10: The Gazes of Dante and Beatrice
97 102 105
Canto 17: Dante’s Exile and His Poetry Canto 27: A Living Man Reaches New Heights Canto 33: Where Is Saint Bernard?
111 Conclusion 117 Bibliography 125 Index of Names
Acknowledgments
It is not possible to acknowledge adequately all my accumulated debts here. However, I do want to express a special word of appreciation to Domenico Pietropaolo for his dedicated and invaluable support throughout this research. His patience, motivation, and immense knowledge have deeply inspired me. I am fortunate to count him as my mentor and friend. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Salvatore Bancheri. It was a great privilege and honour to work and study under his guidance at the University of Toronto, both at the Mississauga and St. George campuses. I would like to thank those who gave me detailed and constructive comments on one or more chapters of this book, including Simone Casini, Eloisa Morra, Antonio Rossini, Giovanni Scarola, and Gino Tellini. They gave freely of their time to discuss nuances of the text and pushed me to clarify concepts, and explore particular areas of study. I have also profited from the assistance of Anne Laughlin, who gave the entire manuscript a reading that was both discerning and heartening. The support of many libraries has been fundamental to the completion of this study. In particular, I gratefully acknowledge the British Library for providing me with the images published herein. To Marianne, Simona, and their families: you put up with me being distracted and missing many events. I am forever thankful for your patience and understanding. I hope to have time now to reconnect with each of you. Of my parents, to whom the book is dedicated, I can only say that without their encouragement it would have been neither conceived nor carried through to completion. Bloomington, Indiana January 2021
Introduction
The majority of studies undertaken on the illuminated manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy have been of a historical nature, with emphasis on the authorship of the illustrations and the historical background on the creation of the manuscript1. Although very relevant, these studies do not explain how the images and words interact in the aesthetic experience of the reader and in the analysis of the poem. This work investigates whether an evaluation based on both the images and verbal text of the Divine Comedy could be more rigorous and comprehensive than one based on words alone, such as that found in a critical edition with commentary. The analysis presented here is grounded in the dominant theories of manuscript illumination of the late Middle Ages and in the phenomenology of the aesthetic experience, especially in relation to Jacques Maritain’s and Umberto Eco’s theories of art and scholasticism. Before embarking on this exploration, it is necessary to first provide a physical description of the manuscript analysed in this book, namely MS Yates Thompson 36. Information about its script and material is provided to reveal its place in the manuscript tradition of the fifteenth century in Italy. The manuscript was illuminated by two artists: Priamo della Quercia and Giovanni di Paolo. Della Quercia was responsible for the miniatures in the Inferno and the Purgatorio, while di Paolo illuminated the Paradiso. Throughout the present work, the styles and criticisms of both artists are explored, with attention paid to the choices of colours, shapes, and scenes put forth by the artists. Furthermore, the book addresses the question of whether the illuminator can be as worthy a critic as the literary commentator of the Divine 1 See the edition of Franco Cosimo Panini: La Divina Commedia di Alfonso d’Aragona, Re Di Napoli Siena, XV Secolo; Ms. Yates Thompson 36, British Library, Londra; … Un Volume di Facsimile e Due Volumi di Commentario. On the same subject, see also The Illuminated Dante Project of l’Università Federico II di Napoli.
10 Alfonso d’Aragona’s Manuscript Edition of the divina commedia
Comedy. As Domenico Pietropaolo suggests, Dante’s text was created with the intention to be illuminated: «The wayfarer, who had conceived the Vita Nuova on the structural image of the copyist, who was perhaps himself an amateur artist, and who so admired the skill of Oderisi da Gubbio as an illuminator of manuscripts, quite naturally reserved his first appreciation for the text as an observable phenomenon» (203). Although I draw on many commentaries and critical editions of the Divine Comedy, Charles Singleton’s interpretation, particularly his development of Auerbach’s figural reading of the poem, plays a crucial role in my approach to Dante and his place in Western literature. That said, all citations of the poem are from Giorgio Petrocchi’s edition, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata. The introduction concludes with a physical description of the manuscript. Chapter 1, Visibile Parlare, discusses some of the historical principles regarding illuminated manuscripts, and then moves to the hermeneutical premises of Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism and Eco’s Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. Utilizing these premises, I explore the validity of the claim that simple manuscripts without illuminations contribute only to an initial experience of intelligibility, devoid of an aesthetic experience. I raise the following question: Does an illuminated manuscript, the combination of words and images, provide a greater and more profound understanding of the original text? To answer this query, specific miniatures from the three canticles are analysed, mainly through the perspective of the theoretical premises of Eco and Maritain. The following three chapters focus on analysing the images and are divided according to the three canticles of the Divine Comedy. As there are over one hundred miniatures, it is not possible to undertake an analysis of every miniature in this book. Therefore, I have developed a rationale for the selection of images from each canticle. Since Dante outlines four divisions in the Inferno, one image from each division has been chosen; these include the ante-inferno and the areas devoted to Dante’s three main types of sin: incontinence, violence, and malice or fraud. Regarding the Purgatorio, I have selected images based on the cantos that have generated significant critical discussion, mindful that the aim of this book is to determine whether the images provide criticism that enriches that of the literary commentators. «Illustrare vuole dire commentare visivamente i prodotti di altri sistemi di segni», says Eco (Arcipelago 10) in an essay that Eloisa Morra rightly considers fundamental to the visual studies of medieval Italian literature that have appeared in recent years (138). That said, this work is not limited to the miniatures; it also examines the decorations found throughout the manuscript. More specifically, the first letter of the second canto of the Purgatorio, which is an elaborately decorated letter “P” and contains within itself the image of a ship, is inspected and interpreted as it relates to the text. The miniature of canto 10 is analysed next: its deep blues and reds and its complex story-telling nature ultimately fulfil Aquinas’s statement that beauty is «id quod visum placet». And, more importantly,
Introduction 11
this is the canto that conveys the meaning of visibile parlare, a concept that is central to this book. After considering this canto on pride and overambition, it would only seem fitting to analyse its mirror canto, canto 18 of acedia. It is interesting to reflect on the miniature of acedia by a miniaturist who, much like Oderisi, dedicated his entire life to art. The analysis of the Purgatorio closes with canto 22, a scene that reflects an alteration in Dante’s emotional state. His heaviness and fear are no longer consuming him; there is an obvious purging of emotions that had plagued him throughout the entire Inferno and the first cantos of the Purgatorio. It is revealed that in this twenty-second canto Dante is getting closer to the Earthly Paradise, making it of utmost importance to reflect on the miniature provided by della Quercia. The chapter on the Paradiso begins with an analysis of the miniature of canto 6, which involves a dedication to the Emperor Justinian and portrays aspects of Dante’s political life. The importance of this miniature is demonstrated as it completes a pattern set out in the entire Commedia. From there, it is necessary to analyse canto 10, since it is the third of six addressed to the reader, and then canto 17, because it is at the centre of the canticle, always a position of importance for Dante. The miniature of canto 27 is next since this is where Dante recounts the appearance of Saint Peter and where he demonstrates his continued antipathy towards the church and its authority. The chapter ends with an investigation of the miniature in canto 33 in which Dante sees God. For the visual commentator, this proves to be one of the most significant and challenging cantos of the entire Commedia, for it is here that Dante finally realizes his objective, which is, after all, the fulfilment of a supreme vision. The overall analysis of the miniatures seeks to differentiate the textual commentators of the Comedy, who strictly aim to inform readers and analyse the text, from the visual commentators, who seek to evoke strong emotions while also providing a rigorous examination of the text. Physical Description of the Manuscript The illuminated manuscript of the Divina Commedia MS Yates Thompson 36 is found in the British Library, the national library of the United Kingdom, located in London. The manuscript was commissioned by Alfonso d’Aragona, also known as Alfonso V of Aragon. He is not to be confused with Alfonso II of Naples, who was also named Alfonso of Aragon (1448-1494). Alfonso V, the patron in question concerning manuscript Yates Thompson 36, was the king of Aragon, Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica, and Sicily, as well as the count of Barcelona and king of Naples. It was during his reign as king of Naples, between 1442 and 1458, that he commissioned MS Yates Thompson 36. He was known as a patron of the arts by virtue of his founding of the Academy of Naples under Giovanni Pontano. The two artists employed by Alfonso
12 Alfonso d’Aragona’s Manuscript Edition of the divina commedia
d’Aragona were Priamo della Quercia, between 1442 and 1450 for the Inferno and Purgatorio, and Giovanni di Paolo in 1450 for the Paradiso. At first, the illuminations were attributed to Lorenzo Vecchietta by Pope-Hennessy (17). However, a few decades later, the illustrations of the first two cantiche were identified by Millard Meiss as the work of «Priamo della Quercia on the basis of comparisons with a documented fresco in the Spediale» (Alexander 50). Therefore, the most recent discovery of Millard Meiss is used, and Priamo della Quercia is regarded as the sole illuminator of the Inferno and Purgatorio. This decision is in further correspondence with modern publications that generally refer to Priamo as the illuminator: for example, in 2017, Christoph Lehner (xi) identified the author of the illustrations as Priamo della Quercia; in 2009, Ziolkowski and Putnam (449) discuss the illuminations of «Virgil without a hat, as he was painted by Priamo della Quercia in a mid-fifteenth-century manuscript»; and, finally, The Dante Encyclopedia, edited by Richard Lansing in 2010 (499), explicitly identifies Priamo della Quercia as the illuminator for the Inferno and Purgatorio. The scribe used the Gothic script, a font typical of Western Europe between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries. It is also possible that the Carolingian script was used, as it was another font commonly used in the late Middle Ages. However, upon examination of the circular formation of letter s, it becomes obvious that the script is indeed Gothic. Randall Rosenfeld explains: «It is well known that Carolingian script used straight s in all positions, whilst Gothic script soon began to replace it with round s at the end of words» (Haines and Rosenfeld 62). To find words in Italian that end in s seems like an impossible task, especially since Dante wrote in the volgare. However, I was immediately drawn to canto 30 of the Purgatorio, where, of the entire Commedia, Dante writes the most in Latin. There are passages in the manuscript that include the Latin words fenis, venis, and plenis. The letter s in each of these words is evidence of the Gothic script, the classic «round s at the end of words». The manuscript is written on parchment, also known as vellum. It is not known from which animal it is derived, since parchment was commonly made from «sheep, pig, goat, or calf-skins soaked in lime, burnished to diminish irregularities in the surface and then dried on a wooden stretcher» (Van Cleave 4). It is important to note that «in the second half of the fifteenth century, as paper became cheaper and more widely available, the use of parchment declined» (4). This is especially significant, as this manuscript was produced in the heart of the second half of the fifteenth century. Given that paper was relinquished for parchment, it can thus be deduced that this is a manuscript of great importance. This conclusion is based not only on the fact that parchment was used instead of paper, but also on consideration of the size and structure of the manuscript. It has an imposing presence at 36.5 cm by 25.8 cm, with a foliation of 190 plus 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves. Further-
Introduction 13
more, the most recent binding on the manuscript is a tooled brown leather binding with gilt edges, attributed to the period of the seventeenth century. Inside the manuscript, there are precisely 110 large miniatures in the lower margin in colour and in gold, as well as three large historiated initials that form partial foliate borders in colour and in gold at the beginning of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, this manuscript was initially commissioned by Alfonso V. In 1538, it was then donated to the convent of San Miguel in Valencia by Fernando de Aragón, duke of Calabria. We know this from the inscription in the manuscript at f.190v by a brother of the monastery of San Miguel de los Reyes in 1613; the inscription reads: «Ex commissione dominorum Inquisitorum Valentie vidi et expurgavi secundum expurgatorium novum Madriti 1612. et subscripsi die. 14. Septembris 1613. ego frater Antonius Oller». From the convent, it came into the possession of the Spanish noble and politician Señor Luis Mayans, who then sold it to Henry Yates Thompson, a collector of illuminated manuscripts and a newspaper proprietor, in May 1901. This is written on the inside upper cover. It was then bestowed to the British Museum in 1941 by Mrs. Yates Thompson after the death of Henry Yates.