Dante Depicted: A Commentary on Image, Text, and Exegesis Around the Commedia

Dante’s Commedia was illuminated almost as soon as it came into circulation. Centuries of readers and editors have been fascinated by the poem’s visual potential, commissioning and inventing cycles of images that push Dante’s narrative beyond the centre of the page, filling the margins and spilling over into visual and material spaces outside the covers of the book. What makes this poem so visual? What specific histories tie these image cycles to the text? ‘Dante Depicted’ is an interactive digital platform that invites users to study illustrations of the Commedia in close relationship with Dante's poem and the commentaries that sprung up around it. A new, multi-authored commentary explores the entanglements between illustrations and canti, contextualising visualisations of Dante’s poem in relation to coeval textual and cultural panoramas. Inspired by discussions at the University of Oxford and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, ‘Dante Depicted’ is an ongoing collaborative endeavour that explores the benefits of the digital platform to investigate text-image relations and shed light on Dante’s visual afterlives.

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