Domenico di Michelino

Domenico di Michelino trained in Florence in the manner of Fra Angelico, the Dominican friar and painter, and left only a modest body of work. One picture keeps his name alive. In 1465, two hundred years after the birth of Dante, the city government wanted to honour the poet it had once driven into exile, and it turned to Domenico for a large painting inside the cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore.

He set Dante at the centre in a red robe and laurel crown, holding the open Divine Comedy. To one side the damned file into the mouth of Hell, behind rise the terraces of Purgatory, and to the right stands Florence itself, its walls and the great dome the architect Brunelleschi had raised a generation before. The book sends out golden rays that fall on the real city, so the poem and the town that banished him share one frame.

It became the most familiar portrait of Dante, copied and reproduced ever since. Steps and a small platform were later built beneath it so visitors can climb close and read the Latin verses along the base.