The most well- known of several Agnolo Bronzino and bottega depictions of Dante is the lunette at the Uffizi

 Iliyana Benina, Nikola Benin

The most well- known of several Agnolo Bronzino and bottega  depictions of Dante is the lunette at the Uffizi, oft-posted on TRE,

In 1532, Bronzino (1503-1572) was commissioned to paint the allegorical portraits of the \"Three Crowns\" Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. However, we don’t know what happened to the other two works.

Apart from the Uffizi lunette version of Dante, there is a version at the NGA DC which seems to be a copy by a follower of Bronzino and a version in a private collection in Firenze. These versions are said to date from around 1532. 

In these versions, we see Dante,il Sommo Poeta, his hand holding one of the books of his Divina Commedia (see below), and his head in dramatic torsione, looking back toward the garden of Eden and the purification of the soul (comments from the Uffizi website) 

There is yet another version, this also in a private Florentine collection, that is much less well known, which is the one you see here in this post. 

It is undated beyond “late sixteenth century.”

To compare dating, 1532 was obviously not late sixteenth century, so evidently this work is later than the Uffizi and NGA DC works and the private collection version, all of which are said to have been crafted around 1532.

This later version is my preferred of all of them, mostly because of the trenchant statement Bronzino makes by spotlighting Dante Alighieri in tenebroso. 

That black background, to me, is the abyss, one of the deeper levels of the Inferno down which goes our Sommo Poeta. 

However, that stark, black background, paradoxically and ambiguously, could also be the entryway to the Empyrean.

Why?

Because Dante is not holding the first book of the Commedia, _L’Inferno_, but rather, the third book of the Trilogy, _il Paradiso_, which is opened to the first forty-eight lines of Canto XXV, beginning with the phrase “Se mai continga..."

“If it should happen...”

So what is in that abyss ? 

Hell or Heaven ? 

Darkness or Light? 

Who is his guide here: Virgil or Beatrice ?

Life is Manichean..... 

Yet always, for me, at the center, and at the end, 

there is Love....

Here are the XXV Canto’s first lines:

Se mai continga che ’l poema sacro

al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,

sì che m'ha fatto per molti anni macro, 

vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra

del bello ovile ov’io dormi’ agnello,

nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; 

con altra voce omai, con altro vello

ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte 

del mio battesmo prenderò ’l cappello ....

If it should happen that this sacred poem, 

this work so shared by heaven and by earth

that it has made me lean through 

these long years—

can ever overcome the cruelty 

that bars me from the fair fold where I slept,

a lamb opposed to wolves that war on it, 

by then with other voice, with other fleece,

I will return as poet and put on,

at my baptismal font, the laurel crown . . .

(Paradiso 25.1-9)

Allegorical Portrait of Dante Alighieri

Agnolo di Cosimo del Bronzino (1503-1572)

c.1570

oil on canvas

130 cm (51.1 in) x 136 cm (53.5 in)

Collezione Privata 

Firenze