Ancient and Honourable Citizen of Florence

The exhibition An Ancient and Honorable Citizen of Florence - The Bargello and Dante, sponsored by the Comitato Nazionale per le Celebrazioni del 700° Anniversario della morte di Dante Alighieri, is the result of the inter-institutional partnership between the Musei del Bargello and the Università di Firenze, and sees the collaboration between the Departments of Literature and Philosophy (DILEF) and of History, Archaeology, Geography, Art and Entertainment (SAGAS) of the University of Florence. The Bargello is Dante’s place par excellence in Florence: here you can find the oldest portrait of Dante, painted by Giotto and his work in 1337, a period during which the Divina Commedia was being spread throughout the city. The catalogue – rich with essays and extracts by numerous specialists – illustrates the complex link between Dante, his work and Florence, analysing the dense network of relationships between painters, illuminators, copyists and commentators, engaged in an unprecedented editorial and artistic enterprise. The volume is enriched with illustrations of the works on display and illuminated manuscripts, as well as a precious final photographic atlas of the murals in the Podestà chapel, which houses the poet’s portrait. Dante was very often a frequenter of the different rooms as a prior of the Bargello and in these same rooms he received both his sentence of exile, and his sentence to death (March 10, 1302). The reconstruction of the delicate relationship between the Poet and Florence assumes an importance that goes far beyond city borders, indelibly investing the history of Dante’s fortune and the way in which we still look at him and his work today.

Luca Azzetta studied under Giuseppe Billanovich at the Università Cattolica of Milan, taking his degree with a thesis on vernacular translations of the first ten books of Livy. He is Associate Professor in Philology of Italian Literature at the University of Florence. He is a member of the executive committee of the Centro Pio Rajna for research in linguistics, philology and literature; of the organising and advisory committee of the Pontifical Council for Culture for the Dante Septicentennial; and of the college of instructors of the PhD course in Philology, Italian Literature and Linguistics, which is currently offered at the University of Florence. He is also co-editor of the journal Rivista di Studi danteschi. Sonia Chiodo took her degree at the University of Florence with a thesis on Late Gothic painting in Florence, under the direction of Mina Gregori. She is Associate Professor of Mediaeval Art History at the University of Florence as well as director of the association ‘Corpus della Pittura Fiorentina’. Teresa De Robertis studied under Emanuele Casamassima at the University of Florence, graduating with a thesis on Roman writing. She is Professor of Latin Palaeography and of Diplomatic Studies at the University of Florence. She has taught at the University of Ferrara and at the Palaeography School of the Florence State Archives. She coordinates the PhD programme in Historical Studies at the Universities of Florence and Siena.