Dante Alighieri avec Florence et les royaumes de la Divine Comédie (Enfer, Purgatoire, Paradis)

Dante died in exile, banished from Florence on pain of being burned alive if he ever came back, and he never did. So there is a deep irony in this painting, made in 1465 for the inside of Florence Cathedral, the city honouring the poet it had thrown out, 200 years after his birth. Domenico di Michelino sets Dante just outside the walls, holding his Divine Comedy, its light falling across the whole scheme of the afterlife: the mouth of Hell to one side, the mountain of Purgatory rising behind, the spheres of Heaven above. On the right is Florence itself, and crowning it is the great dome, finished by Brunelleschi only a few decades earlier, a building the real Dante never lived to see.