Image Creator: Botticelli, Sandro (c.1480-c.1495)

Source: The World Of Dante [ http://www.worldofdante.org/pop_up_query.php?dbid=I002&show=more ]

I came across this image in the Wrold of Dante link provided in the resoruces section of this site. The image portrays Dante and Virgil in the dark wood amongst the three beasts.  This section of the text along side this image spoke to me because they portray the medieval dream sequence trope so powerfully. The text stating, “I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost” (1-2), introduces the reader to the medieval physicality of dreams/visions, which are also represented in texts such as the vita of Christina the astonishing and the vision of the monk of Eynsham. Another aspect besides the physicality of medieval dream/vision iterature is the notion of the dream guide. Lines 112 to 114 of Canto 1 depict Virgil offering his servaces as Dante’s guide through “an eternal place” (114), which is also depicted in the texts listed above of a guide taking the dreamer through the etherial landscape of their visions, which is typically hell and/or purgatory.

Also these lines introduces the reader to the medieval tropic imagery of the wood, which serves as a signifier of a mystical and allegorical venture in the wake of the characters. Examples of this trope can be found in Aurthruian romances and other courtly romances such as Eric and Enide. The image by Sandro Botticelli (c.1445-1510) represents the mystical and the allegorical dispositon of this text. The wood being the place where Dante encountered the three beasts who are allegroies of the three separations of hell appitite, violence and fraud; this is also where he encounters the dead Roman poet Virgil who will guide him, thus the mystical and allegorcal nature of the wood. Botticelli depicts the encounters sequentially and the wood surrounding the encounters, this is typical of late medieval/rennaisance art where all the events of a particular scene are represented in one image and , like in the literature the image reprsents, the wood serves as the signifier of the surreal in the image. The wood indicates that the image being represnted is a dreamscape.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.