Left: Dante on Earth. Right: Dante in Heaven. Both works are by William Cave Thomas (1820-1896), watercolours on paper, 13 3/8 x 9 7/8 inches (34 x 25 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Bonhams.
Cave Thomas was obviously interested in the great Italian poets of the fourteenth century like Francesco Petrarca [Petrarch], Dante Alighieri, and Giovanni Boccaccio, and he did a number of paintings related to their lives. Dante on Earth shows Dante in a contemplative mood with his head down thinking while he walks by a church in Florence. He holds a book, likely one of his own works, in his right hand behind his back. Following Beatrice's death in 1290, Dante, as told in the Vita Nuova, withdrew into intense study and started composing poems dedicated to her memory. In the painting women in the background look on at the great poet and gossip amongst themselves. An apprehensive child hastens to his mother's side. Thomas has not chosen to portray Beatrice Portinari in this vision of the poet on earth, perhaps because she had already died at this point.
Dante in Heaven shows the poet resting on a cloud gazing lovingly at a woman in white and holding white lilies symbolic of her purity. This figure likely represents his beloved Beatrice who predeceased him by many years. It is reminiscent of Ary Scheffer's treatment of this same subject, the most famous version of which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is unlikely that Thomas ever saw this work because it was commissioned by and sold to Charles C. Perkins of Boston in 1851. Thomas may have been familiar, however, with the line engraving published by Goupil & Co. An earlier version of this picture entitled The Vision, Dante and Beatrice and dating to 1846 is in the Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Thomas could easily have seen this version because it was exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857 and Colnaghi and Agnew's published a photograph of it that same year.
The model for the face of Dante in Thomas's watercolours might be Dante's portrait by Giotto of c.1335 in the centre of a fresco representing Paradise in the Cappella del Podestà [Chapel of the Podestà] at the Bargello Palace in Florence. Other possibilities are Dante's portrayal in the painting of 1465 by Domenico di Michelino in the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence or Sandro Botticelli's posthumous portrait of 1495 that is now in a private collection in Switzerland. Portrayals of Dante in Victorian art include several works by D. G. Rossetti and Henry Holiday. The closest work to Thomas's conception is Rossetti's diptych oil painting The Salutation of Beatrice of 1859-63, now in the National Gallery of Canada. This shows Dante's meeting with Beatrice in both earth and heaven. Rossetti's paintings, however, are far more successful in both composition and colouring. Other important works by Rossetti dealing with Dante include "Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice, the early watercolour version at the Tate Britain dating to 1856 and the later large oil version of 1871-81 at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the watercolour Dante drawing an Angel on the First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice of 1853, now at the Ashmolean Museum. Henry Holiday painted a number of works including his early Dante and Beatrice that was shown at the Royal Academy in 1861, the same time as Thomas's Petrarch's First Sight of Laura. Holiday's best known painting is his later Dante and Beatrice that he exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883. Holiday also did a watercolour portrait of Dante that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875. Dante's image in this watercolour was based on a supposed death mask of Dante given to Holiday by the sculptor Thomas Woolner.
Bibliography
The Chester Sale. Chester: Bonhams (November 9, 2011): lot 472.
Created 3 February 2024