GIACINTO MASSOLA

DANTE AND BEATRICE.
EPISODE FROM LA VITA NUOVA

GIACINTO MASSOLA
Sarzana, 1820 – Genoa, 1865

Pencil and grey wash on paper
24.5 × 21 cm / 9.6 × 8.3 in

This drawing by Giacinto Massola is based on an episode from La Vita Nuova (c. 1294), the autobiographical work by Dante Alighieri devoted to his love for Beatrice Portinari. Unlike the later and more frequently illustrated scenes from the Divine Comedy, the present composition depicts a profoundly human and psychologically charged moment, centred on silence, misunderstanding, and emotional distance.

The subject refers to an episode in which Dante, concealing his true feelings for Beatrice, pretends to be attracted to other women. Upon hearing rumours of this behaviour, Beatrice refuses to speak to him. It is precisely this moment of refusal — marked by restraint rather than confrontation — that Massola chooses to represent. Beatrice appears accompanied by two women: at her side walks her friend Monna Vanna, while slightly behind follows Beatrice’s maid. The group passes near the Santa Trinita Bridge in Florence, a detail that anchors the scene within a clearly identifiable historical and urban setting.

Beatrice is dressed in white, a traditional symbol of purity and moral distance. Dante, by contrast, is placed at the margin of the composition, visually excluded from the group. The absence of direct interaction intensifies the emotional tension of the scene: meaning is conveyed not through action, but through gesture, posture, and the physical space separating the figures.

The choice of this subject is closely connected to the artistic language of the Italian Risorgimento. One of the central ideas of nineteenth-century Italian art was the evocation of a shared national history and cultural memory. Artists were unable to openly advocate for political unity, yet through their engagement with figures from Italy’s literary and historical past — particularly from central and southern Italy — they implicitly asserted a common cultural identity. In this context, Dante and Beatrice became powerful symbolic figures.

Massola repeatedly returned to the image of Dante, whom he regarded as an embodiment of Italian moral and cultural consciousness. This drawing belongs among the most compelling examples of his engagement with Dantean themes. It demonstrates how academic draftsmanship is combined with a late Romantic sensitivity and a nuanced psychological approach.

Here, the episode from La Vita Nuova is not treated as a mere illustration of a literary source, but as an independent meditation on love, silence, and ethical trial. In this sense, the drawing resonates both with the medieval literary tradition and with the intellectual concerns of the nineteenth century, for which the past served as a language through which to reflect on the present.