Dante Alighieri, 1875 Pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper; 25 x 19½ inches (63.5 x 49.5 cm). Click on image to enlarge it.
Dante is shown in a frontal pose with downcast eyes wearing his famous headdress, crowned with the laurel leaves awarded to the best poets. He holds in his right hand a copy of his famous text La Vita Nuova, first published in 1294, which he rests on a marble ledge together with a handwritten page. The background is a blue curtain.
Holiday had been an admirer of the writings of Dante since he was a young man. There is an early drawing by Simeon Solomon that must date from the mid to late 1850s of Solomon and Holiday Paying Homage to Their Heroes. This drawing includes six figures prominent in art, literature, and music, one of whom is Dante. Holiday’s portrait of the poet was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875, no. 639. In his Reminiscences Holiday recalled:
“I painted a life-size head of Dante this year, with the help of the mask taken from his face, of which Woolner, the sculptor, had kindly given me a cast some years before. At the same time, being strongly attracted both of the man and his work, and feeling the inadequacy of translations, I put myself through a course of Italian, and was able to get the full flavour of the ‘Vita Nuova,’ which cannot but suffer, even in such able hands as Rossetti’s” (43).
The Art Journal confirmed the source of the image and praised the work: “We like the large way in which H. Holiday has treated the head of Dante Alighieri (639), which it appears he has studied from the famous cast said to have been taken from the face of the poet after death” (251).
Bibliography
“The Royal Academy Exhibition.” The Art Journal (1875): 247-52.
Holiday, Henry. Reminiscences of My Life. London: Heinemann, 1914.
Last modified 14 January 2023