Dante Alighieri, his life and works . is death,in 1608, to his pupil Pietro Tacca. One day Taccashowed it, with other curiosities, to the Duchess Sforza,who, having wrapped it in a scarf of green cloth, carriedit away, and God knows into whose hands the preciousobject has fallen, or where it is to be found. . On ac-count of its singular beauty, it had often been drawn bythe scholars of Tacca. It has been supposed that thishead was the original mask from which the casts nowexisting are derived. Mr. Seymour Kirkup, in a note onthis passage from Cinelli, says that there are three masksof Dante at
Dante Alighieri, his life and works . is death,in 1608, to his pupil Pietro Tacca. One day Taccashowed it, with other curiosities, to the Duchess Sforza,who, having wrapped it in a scarf of green cloth, carriedit away, and God knows into whose hands the preciousobject has fallen, or where it is to be found. . On ac-count of its singular beauty, it had often been drawn bythe scholars of Tacca. It has been supposed that thishead was the original mask from which the casts nowexisting are derived. Mr. Seymour Kirkup, in a note onthis passage from Cinelli, says that there are three masksof Dante at Florence, all of which have been judged bythe first Roman and Florentine sculptors to have beentaken from life [that is, from the face after death]—the ^ An extract from this biography, along with some interesting remarksby Kirkup, is given in a letter from the latter to Charles Lyell from Flor-ence, 27 February, 1842 (printed in The Poems of the Vita Nuova andCoHvito of Dante, translated by Charles Lyell, 1842, pp. xvii-xix).. MASK OF DANTE IN THE UFFIZI AT FLOKENCEFormerly in po^seisioi of the Marchese Torrigiani DEATH-MASK OF DANTE 137 slight differences noticeable between them being such asmight occur in casts made from the original mask. Oneof these casts was given to Mr. Kirkup by the sculptorBartolini, another belonged to the late sculptor, ProfessorRicci,^ and the third is in the possession of the MarcheseTorrigiani.^ In the absence of historical evidence in regard to thismask, some support is given to the belief in its genuine-ness by the fact that it appears to be the type of thegreater number of the portraits of Dante executed fromthe fourteenth to the sixteenth century, and was adoptedby Raffaelle as the original from which he drew the like-ness which has done most to make the features of thepoet familiar to the world. The character of the mask itself affords, however, theonly really satisfactory ground for confidence in the truthof the tradition concerning it. I
Size: 1299px × 1924px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade19, booksubjectdantealighieri12651321
