The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice: The Miracle of Heaven, painted terracotta, 20th century
Dimensions: H 45 x W 54 x D 22 cm
On the base of the sculpture is inscribed a famous verse by Dante Alighieri, taken from Vita Nova (the sonnet “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare”):
“and it seems as though she were a thing come down from heaven to earth to show a miracle”
The text celebrates Beatrice’s almost divine nature, describing her as a living miracle descended among men.
The figure of Dante, on the left, is immediately recognizable by his aquiline profile and 14th-century cap, as he gazes at Beatrice with a mixture of awe and admiration while clutching a book, a symbol of his poetic output.
On the opposite side, Beatrice embodies the grace and humility of Vita Nova, accompanied by a female figure in the streets of Florence and separated from the poet by a central element resembling an ancient well, which symbolically divides the earthly world from the spiritual.
The entire work is executed in a late 19th-century Neo-Gothic style that uses polychromy to evoke ancient terracotta, romantically celebrating the eternal bond between the visual arts and Italian literature through the image of its most iconic protagonists.
