Imagining Dante at the Turnbull Gallery: Upcoming exhibition

26 October 2021

The Turnbull Gallery is tantalisingly close to reopening with its first exhibition in over two years.

“Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy, around 1265. When he died in Ravenna in 1321, Dante had spent 20 years in exile writing his masterpiece La Commedia, later known as La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), which recounts in vernacular Italian his visionary journey through the afterlife. Its three sections tell of Dante’s passage through the subterranean circles of Hell (Inferno), up the mountain of Purgatory (Purgatorio), and ultimately into the celestial realm of Paradise (Paradiso), exploring themes of sin, virtue and transcendent love.

Such is the potency of the Divine Comedy’s language and imagery that it has fuelled the imaginations of artists from Dante’s time to our own. Hundreds of illustrated manuscript copies of the poem survive from the 14th century alone. This year, the world is commemorating the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death.

To mark the occasion, this display showcases some of the illustrated editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy held by the Alexander Turnbull Library, complemented by a late 19th-century chromolithographic portrait of Dante copied from a fresco by the Renaissance artist Luca Signorelli (c. 1450–1523).”

Three prints by Piranesi in mural form welcome you to the Gallery, with Dante himself peering over this small homage to his works. We look forward to welcoming you in the very near future.

An initiative from the Turnbull Endowment Trust.

Llewelyn Jones, Imaging Team, ATL