SOURCE: “The Visual Arts: A Basis for Dante's Imagery in Purgatory and Paradise,” Michigan Academician, Vol. X, No. 2, Fall, 1977, pp. 127-41.

In the following essay, Fengler and Stephany demonstrate Dante's knowledge of art as evidenced in Canto X of Purgatorio, and furnish examples of the type of art that he may have observed and been inspired by.

The observation that the visual arts inspired certain sections of Dante's Divine Comedy has frequently been made. Therefore an understanding of the type of art which Dante would have seen aids the reader in understanding Dante's imagery. When the poet borrows ideas from the visual arts, he utilizes them not as mere decorative additions to the Comedy; rather, the actual style of art invoked contributes to the meaning of Dante's passages. We will examine the reliefs in canto X of Purgatory and the mosaic images recurrent in Paradise as examples of...