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Dante Alighieri (Botticelli)
Dante Alighieri (Bronzino)
 
Dante Alighieri & the 18th-century Sturm und Drang
A. Introduction

1
. Part 1:
 a. Divine Comedy Full Text English-Italian
 b. London Baretti 
 c. Gersternberg

2. Part 2:
 a. Mozart, Dante & Sturm und Drang 1 
 b. Mozart, Dante & Sturm und Drang 2 
 d. Mozart, Dante & Sturm und Drang 4 

3. Part 3:
 a. William Blake ill.s
 b. Gustave Doré ill.s 
 c. John Flaxman ill.s 
 f. Stradano ill.s
 g. Zuccari ill.s


      DANTE ALIGHIERI & THE 18TH CENTURY STURM UND DRANG

                                         INTRODUCTION

A
. General Introduction

                                               PART 1
              Sturm und Drang/Romanticism & Dante Alighieri

 a. Divine Comedy Full Text English-Italian
 b. London Baretti's Dante & Shakespeare Books & Johnson/Garrick's Circle (1753-1777)
 c. Gersternberg, Dante's Ugolino (1768) and the Manual on the Sturm und Drang (1766/1767)
 d. The 18th-century English Translations of Dante's Divine Comedy (coming soon)
 e. The 18th-century German Translations of Dante's Divine Comedy (coming soon)
 f. Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegel brothers, the transition from the Sturm und Drang to the Romanticism and Dante Alighieri (coming soon)
 g. Ingres, Mozart, Dante and Shakespeare: an example of dialectic between Neoclassical Romanticism and Romantic Romanticism (coming soon)
 h. The controversial discovery of Dante Alighieri's autograph (2022)
 i. Dante as Simon Mago: a possible interpretation (coming soon)

                                               PART 2
                                Mozart & Dante Alighieri


 a. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 1; Mozart, Benda & the Requiem 1791 
 b. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 2: Mozart, Schweitzer & Idomeneo 
 c. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 3: Don Giovanni (coming soon)
 d. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 4: The Magic Flute & its exotic sources

                                               PART 3
                      Illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy


 a. William Blake's 113 Dante Illustrations (ca. 1785-1827)
 b. Gustave Doré's 136 Dante Illustrations (1855/1861-1868)
 c. John Flaxman's 111 Dante Illustrations (1793)
 d. Füssli's & Reynolds's Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 e. Botticelli's Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 f. Stradano's 28 Dante Illustrations (ca. 1587/1590 & 1595)
 g. Zuccari's 88 Dante Illustrations (1586/1588)
 h. Anthology of Manuscripts Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 i. Anthology of 14th/15th-century Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 j. The Romanticism & the Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 k. Original Manuscripts & Illuminations (coming soon)

                                               PART 4
                          Music to Dante's Divine Comedy
 a. Dittersdorf's Conte Ugolino (coming soon)
 b. The first Romanticism & Dante (coming soon)
 c. The late Romanticism & Dante (coming soon)
 d. The early 20th-century & Dante (coming soon)

                                               PART 5
                          Cinema & Dante's Divine Comedy
 a. The films on Dante's Divine Comedy (coming soon)
 b. The films inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy (coming soon)

                                               PART 6
                    Other Resources on Dante's Divine Comedy
 a. The Lecturae Dantis available (coming soon)
 b. Dante's reading and acting in modern era: mistakes and interpretational quaestiones (coming soon)

It's an exclusive Impossible Interview by
          MozartCircle

      S. & L.M. Jennarelli
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INTRODUCTION
Dante Alighieri's & Co.'s fortune:
from the Sturm und Drang to the Romanticism


Just few know that, with Shakespeare, Homer, Milton, Corneille, also the 13th-/14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri became a model of art superior mastery and of the art sublime for the artists of the 18th-century, who recognized themselves as supporters and followers of the theory of the independent strength of the artistic creative Genius against the normativeness of the academic rules. 
        Such Artistic Academic Rules (for Bodmer, in reality, just a low-level form of pseudo-classicism!) were mainly established by the French Academy, starting in ca. 1650s, and found its own champion in the much-hated Voltaire, who brutally attacked Shakespeare, Homer, Dante Alighieri, Milton, Corneille and many others, as anti-[French]classicism barbarians.
        This Genius movement, that had a Pan-European dimension, in Germany, at some point, acquired the felicitous label of Sturm und Drang.
        The same German scholars, artists and intellectuals, that had defined the principal characteristics of the Sturm und Drang, between the 1790s and the 1800s, for various reasons (many of political nature, because most of them substantially refused the Terror of the French Revolution) re-labeled their own Movement of the Genius as Romanticism.
        The Pan-European call of the masses to the Romanticism by Madame de Stael and then by Berchet definitively transformed the Genius Movement (i.e. Sturm und Drang) in the Romanticism, we all know.
        The artistic models and heroes of the previous Genius Movement (i.e. Sturm und Drang) automatically became the artistic models and heroes of the Romanticism and the music world made its part: as a consequence, the Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Dante Alighieri (and Middle-Ages and Super-Natural themed) music productions flourished in the 19th-century, thanks to Beethoven, Benda, Dittersdorf, Reichardt, Reicha, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod, Saint-Saens, Wagner and various others well into the 20th-century with Wolf-Ferrari, Tchaikovsky, Puccini (Gianni Schicchi after Dante's Divine Comedy; just few know that even his own Turandot was not a racist work [!?], but, instead, a 1762 Genius movement philo-Chinese cineseria  fairy-tale of Persian origin by the Venetian Count and playwright Carlo Gozzi, id est a typical product of the 18th-century total adoration for the elitistique fashion for any sort of Chinese form of exotic Luxury, even strange and bizarre: see, for example, Drottingholm Chinese Pavilion, etc.; the master of the Sturm und Drang himself, Schiller, re-worked Carlo Gozzi's cineseria play) and Prokofiev.
        Still some time just before his own death, the Stürmer/Romantic master Schiller was writing letters with Goethe, laughing at the cold, frozen and heartless [French] pseudo-classicistic academic rules of the poor Voltaire...

Dante is a «romantic poet» and a universal model of the unfettered Genius of the Arts (London, 1785)
The cultural atmosphere of harsh conflict between the French pseudo-classicistic Academy and the artists/intellectuals supporters of the Theory of the Genius of Arts is well represented by Henry Boyd in 1785, in his introduction to his complete translation of the whole Inferno by Dante in 2 voll. (London, 1785):
        «[p. 27] Since the French, the restorers of the art of criticism, cast a damp upon original invention, the character of Dante has been thrown under a deeper shade. That agreable and volatile nation found in themselves an insuperable aversion to the gloomy and romantic bard, whose genius, ardent, melancholy and sublime was so different from their own...
         [p. 28] Like Shakespear, the poetry of Dante, unfettered by rules, is distinguished by bold original strokes of sublimity and pathos, and often by just and striking delineations of character...
         [p. 29] Dante and Homer are so far similar in their fortunes and genius, that they were both the earliest poetical writers known in their respective languages, and both were remarkable for a simplicity of style, and a greatness of thought».
Dante, for Boyd (1785), is gloomy, ROMANTIC (it means here, more or less, creator/depictor of wild sceneries/lively and intense stories full of pathos; this term appears here, before even the very invention of the term Romanticism as a substitute for Genius Movement and Sturm und Drang: see infra Baretti's English-Italian Dictionary explanations of the English term Romantic as already in use in 1770s, London 1771), GENIUS, ARDENT, MELANCHOLY and SUBLIME: all typical characteristics of the Sturm und Drang and Romantic artist!





Füssli, Paolo e Francesca (after Dante's Divine Comedy), ca. 1785


Rossini had already inserted some music for Dante's story Paolo and Francesca (Inferno, 5, 121 ff.) in his opera Otello (3rd Act) in 1816. Various years later, Rossini reworked the same material, creating his Dante piece: Francesca da Rimini - Farò come colui che piange e dice (1848).  


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      STURM UND DRANG/ROMANTICISM & DANTE ALIGHIERI
                                               PART 1

 a. Divine Comedy Full Text English-Italian 
 b. London Baretti's Dante & Shakespeare Books & Johnson/Garrick's Circle (1753-1777)
 c. Gersternberg, Dante's Ugolino (1768) and the Manual on the Sturm und Drang (1766/1767)
 d. The 18th-century English Translations of Dante's Divine Comedy (coming soon)
 e. The 18th-century German Translations of Dante's Divine Comedy (coming soon)
 f. Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegel brothers, the transition from the Sturm und Drang to the Romanticism and Dante Alighieri (coming soon)

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                        1.a THE DIVINE COMEDY TEXT 
                   (in English and in the original Italian)
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This most useful edition by the Princeton University has a fundamental hypertextual structure, that let you reach, just in one click, more the 70 original ancient commentaries to the Divine Comedy, the commentary by Toinbee and many other tools for a correct philological approach to the text. It has also a complete Lectura Dantis in Italian and a partial one in English.


INFERNO PURGATORIO PARADISO
Canto 1 Canto 1 Canto 1
Canto 2 Canto 2 Canto 2
Canto 3 Canto 3 Canto 3
Canto 4 Canto 4 Canto 4
Canto 5 Canto 5 Canto 5
Canto 6 Canto 6 Canto 6
Canto 7 Canto 7 Canto 7
Canto 8 Canto 8 Canto 8
Canto 9 Canto 9 Canto 9
Canto 10 Canto 10 Canto 10
Canto 11 Canto 11 Canto 11
Canto 12 Canto 12 Canto 12
Canto 13 Canto 13 Canto 13
Canto 14 Canto 14 Canto 14
Canto 15 Canto 15 Canto 15
Canto 16 Canto 16 Canto 16
Canto 17 Canto 17 Canto 17
Canto 18 Canto 18 Canto 18
Canto 19 Canto 19 Canto 19
Canto 20 Canto 20 Canto 20
Canto 21 Canto 21 Canto 21
Canto 22 Canto 22 Canto 22
Canto 23 Canto 23 Canto 23
Canto 24 Canto 24 Canto 24
Canto 25 Canto 25 Canto 25
Canto 26 Canto 26 Canto 26
Canto 27 Canto 27 Canto 27
Canto 28 Canto 28 Canto 28
Canto 29 Canto 29 Canto 29
Canto 30 Canto 30 Canto 30
Canto 31 Canto 31 Canto 31
Canto 32 Canto 32 Canto 32
Canto 33 Canto 33 Canto 33
Canto 34
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                        1.b LONDON BARETTI'S DANTE
                            AND SHAKESPEARE BOOKS 
                         & JOHNSON/GARRICK'S CIRCLE 
                                        (1753-1777)
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1.b.a The London 1753 book by Baretti (who had begun his war against Voltaire already in 1740s) was written to defend Dante Alighieri, Homer, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Milton and Corneille from the harsh attacks of Voltaire, writing as a champion of the French Academy.
       This essay has been of enormous influence in Europe: the ideas and theories on the Genius of the Arts and on the characteristics and aesthethics of the works of art of the True Geniuses of the Arts widely circulated, also thanks to the London Circle of Johnson and Garrick, to which Baretti belonged to. Nonetheless, curiously just few people know the original text, you can read here.
          In the Introduction, we've already seen the texts by Henry Boyd (one of the very first English translators of the whole Divine Comedy), as a direct influence of Baretti's ideas on the English cultural life.

1.b.b Another dissertation by Baretti appeared then in 1777, to praise Shakespeare (and the theory of the Genius of the Arts) and to attack Voltaire once again.
         
1.b.c We present here also another essay to defend Shakespeare (and the theory of the Genius of the Arts) and to attack Voltaire. It was written in 1769 by another member of the London Circle of Johnson and Garrick: Elizabeth Montagu. It is said that, in her dissertation (in the style of Baretti's), Montagu went too far in her remarks and Johnson didn't appreciate it at all, creating some distance between these two leaders of the London cultural world of the 18th-century.

It is impossible to write on Genius Movement/Sturm und Drang and Romanticism, without knowing these three books and the English transalations of Dante's Divine Comedy with their theorethical introductions.

Downloadable original books:
 • G. Baretti, Dissertation Upon The Italian Poetry, in which are interspersed some remarks on Mr. Voltaire's essay on the epic poets, London 1753

 • G. Baretti, Discours sur Shakespeare et sur Monsieur de Voltaire, London-Paris 1777

 • E. Montagu, Essay On The Writings And Genius Of Shakespeare, compared with the Greek and French dramatic poets, with some remarks upon the misrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire, London 1769 [3rd ed. 1772] 
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              1.c GERSTENBERG, DANTE'S UGOLINO (1768)
     AND THE MANUAL ON THE STURM UND DRANG (1770)
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The role of von Gerstenberg was fundamental in establishing the style, the taste and the artistic models, that had to be used by the Sturm und Drang intellectuals and artists.
      His well declared artistic heroes and models were Dante Alighieri and Shakespeare, considered the two main giants of the arts, highly representing, with their works, the principle of the Unfettered Genius of the Arts:
Denn großen Genies sind Auswüchse wesentlich: erinnern Sie sich des Dante und Shakespear?
[Because the great Geniuses are essentially Exaggerations: do you remember Dante and Shakespeare?]
von Gerstenberg, Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Literatur, 1766/1767
A polyglot and very learned scholar, von Gerstenberg had also a special interest in music and music theory. His early friendship with Scheibe, at the beginning, put him (in particular for music) into a grey zone between the then Genius Movement (that was going to become Sturm und Drang in 1780s) and the French Academy supporters. 
      Nonetheless, as Plebuch pointed out, von Gerstenberg de facto progressively abandoned certain Scheibe's theories to position himself at the very centre of the Genius Movement: in 1898 Montague Jacobs wrote a study on Gerstenberg's theatre production titled Gerstenbergs Ugolino: ein Vorläufer des Geniedramas, where Geniedramas are the dramas written by the Sturm und Drang artists, like Schiller.
        In 1768 von Gesternberg published his major work for theatre, Ugolino, directly inspired by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Especially its written text became very famous and rapidly among intellectuals and artists, who highly appreciated it and transformed it in a model of literature, being, de facto, Ugolino the first theatre dramatic action of the German world. In 1790s Ugolino became also a libretto for an opera.
      Still today the scholars consider von Gerstenberg's Ugolino a masterpiece drama of strong impact.

Die Geschichte dieses Drama ist aus dem Dante bekannt.
[The story of this drama is famous thanks to Dante.]
von Gerstenberg, Ugolino, 1768

Moreover, Gesternberg developed a personal friendship with C.P.E. Bach (who belonged to a family of composers J.S. Bach, etc. not particularly appreciated by Scheibe) and developed texts attached to unfettered Genius dramatic music works composed by C.P.E. Bach, by using both Shakespeare and Dante as textual models, in order to create an artistic unity with the music by C.P.E. Bach.


Among Gerstenberg's most influential works the melodrama libretto Ariadne auf Naxos (1765), that, in a version re-edited by Brandes, received the most famous music by the great G. Benda. Mozart listened to this melodrama (Benda, Gerstenberg, Brandes) in 1778 and fell in love with the genre, with great enthusiasm: he wrote a probably lost Semiramis directly inspired by that style; then Zaide, Serail, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, etc. feature various dramatic elements derived from the influence of this type of melodrama developed by Benda, especially in the recitativi accompagnati or in real melodrama style sections (see Zaide).

An edition of Benda/Gerstenberg/Brandes Ariadne auf Naxos conducted by Christian Benda, direct descendant of the 18th-century composer G.A. Benda.
 

Gerstenberg's series Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Literatur (voll. 1, 2 and 3) are considered a powerful and highly influential Manifesto or even a real theoretical manual of style of the Genius Movement (that in 1780s became better known as Sturm und Drang).

Downloadable original books:
 • H.W. von Gerstenberg, Ugolino, Hamburg and Bremen 1768

 • H.W. von Gerstenberg, Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Literatur, vol. 1 and 2, Schleswig and Leipzig 1766

 • H.W. von Gerstenberg, Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Literatur, vol. 3, Schleswig and Leipzig 1767

Some music works written on Libretti and Poems by von Gerstenberg:
 • Scheibe J.A., Ariadne auf Naxos (1765)
 • Bach C.P.E., Musikalisches Vielerley (1770)
 • Benda G., Ariadne auf Naxos (1775)
 • Bach J.C.F., Die Amerikanerin (1776)
 • Hobein J.F., 28 Lieder mit Melodien (1778)
 • Reichardt J.F., Ariadne auf Naxos (1780)
 • Weimar G.P., Lieder mit Clavierbegleitung (1780)
 • Cramer C.F., Flora (1787)
      with
      Fantasia in C minor by CPE Bach, with two alternative text settings by
      Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, one from Socrates, the other
      Hamlet's soliloquy

 • Bach J.C.F., Musikalische Nebenstunden (1787-88)
 • Reichardt J.F., 25 Deutsche Gesänge (1788)
 • Kunzen F.L.A., Weisen und Lyrische Gesänge in Musik (1788)
 • Reichardt J.F., Cäcilia (1790/95)
 • Ditters von Dittersdorf C.A., Ugolino (1796, Opera)
 • Kuhlau F., 3 Gedichte aus Gerstenberg's poëtischen Wäldchen (1820)
 • Kunzen F.L.A., Hymne auf die Harmonie (n.d. but before 1823)
 • Böcklin von Böcklinsau F.F.S.A., Klavierstücke mit Gesang für das deutsche Frauenzimmer (n.d. but before 1823)









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1.h THE CONTROVERSIAL DISCOVERY
       OF DANTE ALIGHIERI'S AUTOGRAPH (2022)
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In Spring 2022 the discovery of a possible autograph of Dante Alighieri was firstly revealed to the public. The importance of this discovery is determined by the fact, that it is well known, how, today, we do not have any kind of Dante's autographs extant at all, a fact, in part, caused by the Alighieri/Donati family war and the long political and personal persecution, that badly affected the whole life of Dante himself.
      The original communication of the discovery is printed in the scientific Journal Atti e Memorie published by the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Scienze Lettere e Arti.
      The discoverer of the controversial autograph is a private citizen, who asked to maintain his personal anonimity: he had found a 1295 parchment with a seal, well hidden in a 1906 edition of the Divine Comedy with the illustrations by Doré. Then the parchment was sent to a scholar to read, study and publish it.
      The signature of Dante (that can be seen in the photo supra with that of Guido Cavalcanti), if real, would be the first ever autograph of any kind known in modern times. We can read on the parchment:
      Ego Dantes Allaghery laudavi et me subschripsi.
      I, Dante Alighieri, approved and subscribed.
This signature appear with another three signatures of important figures of the Italian literature:
      Ego Guido de Chavalchantibus me subscribo (Guido Cavalcanti)
      Ego ser Burnectus Latini notarius laudavi atque schripsi (Brunetto Latini)
      Ego Dinus Chompagni minius doctorum me subscripsi (Dino Compagni)

The text of the parchment apparently is a fictitious (or real?) definition of/agreement on the correct use of ma (i.e. but) in the Italian language, then subscribed by the four Italian poets, writers and scholars in 1295. For this reason (and for a few other ones) most of the Dante and Middle Ages scholars reject the authenticity of this autograph of Dante Alighieri and rather consider this parchment a sort of humoristic joke of some Dante scholar of the end of the 19th-century or of the beginning of the 20th-century.

Nonetheless, it's a curious fact, that this autograph of Dante Alighieri features a calligraphy quality, that is very similar to the famous written description left by Bruni: magra, lunga e molto corretta (i.e. thin, long and very correct).
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                               MOZART & DANTE ALIGHIERI
                                               PART 2


 a. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 1; Mozart, Benda & the Requiem 1791 
 b. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 2: Mozart, Schweitzer & Idomeneo 
 c. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 3: Don Giovanni (coming soon)
 d. Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 4: The Magic Flute & its exotic sources
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          2.a MOZART, DANTE AND THE STURM UND DRANG 1:
                        Mozart, Benda & the Requiem 1791
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                           Part 2 & 4 of this article can be read here:
                       
Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 2
                        Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 4

2.a.a Mozart's own Drang and the Sturm und Drang 
The English translation Storm and stress is an infamous misleading mistake. Many asked for an abolition of this erroneous English expression, but still today Storm and stress gains new victims even among scholars, creating much confusion and leading to fallacious conclusions. As a matter of fact, Storm and stress in English means and is used mostly in the sense Storm and storm, while the original expression Sturm und Drang (invented in 1776 and used for the Genius Movement starting in the 1780s) means Storm and drive, where drive means the impulse of one's own heart, that leads to a certain sort of action.
       To comprehend this fundamental distinction between German and English helps us to better understand the influence of the Genius Movement/Sturm und Drang in music in the 18th-century.
       This is, in particular, true for Mozart, an author, who deeply absorbed the Genius Movement culture of his time, but this fact continuously re-emerged in his music productions in forms less perspicuous to those who have not a precise knowledge of the 18th-century Genius Movement: consider, for example, the Introitus of his Requiem 1791 and Benda's Funeral song for Juliette in his Shakespearean Sturm und Drang opera Romeo and Julie 1776.

G. Benda, Shakespeare-inspired Sturm und Drang Romeo und Julie (1776), Act III: Funeral Song. Im Grabe wohnt Vergessenheit, inspirational to Mozart's Requiem 1791 famous Introitus 


The confusion of Drang with storm, intended as stress, creates a dangerous situation, that may lead even scholars to totally wrong conclusions, like those who want to reduce the erroneous English formula Storm and stress to simply Storm, just by rejecting the Drang element, and nothing else...
       It is a fact that Mozart's Sturm und Drang was, in great part, a Drang type of music, built, à la C.P.E. Bach (whose teachings Leopold Mozart admired so much!), on musical emotions and dimensions, that were rather part of the Drang world than of the Sturm world: the melancholy, the sadness, the inner sorrow, the interior meditation on one's heart (Piano Concerto K488, 2nd mov. based on a theme by Sturm und Drang composer Reichardt) were all parts of the Drang, with the funeral songs (Requiem 1791) and the cemeterial and supernatural, even magic atmospheres (Don Giovanni 1787 and The Magic Flute 1791). 
       Already in 1786 (practically before the premiere of his Nozze di Figaro), Mozart was considered the Klopstock of music and Haydn the Gellert of music (von Dittersdorf): Mozart and Haydn were already considered two masters and leaders of the Genius Movement in music (known also as Sturm und Drang since ca. 1780s).
       In the winter 1791, the very fathers and models of the Romanticism (Schlegel, who was also a most famous Dante scholar; Bürger and Gotter) decided to ask Mozart to write an opera entirely based on Shakespeare's works (The Tempest), but Mozart suddenly died in the meantime.

2.a.b Mozart and Dante Alighieri: various encounters, but mostly in his Idomeneo (1781) and Don Giovanni (1787)
The influence of Dante Alighieri on Mozart can be found in various works by him.
       First of all, we remember in 1778 Mozart's admiration for the drama and music of Ariadne auf Naxos (music by Benda and libretto by von Gerstenberg, the famous Sturm und Drang poet great admirer of Dante, re-edited by Brandes), which influenced his Zaide, Serail, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute.
       Then we remember Idomeneo (1781), because Abate Varesco worked on his libretto, keeping, as a linguistic reference for his own Italian poetry, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
       However, the most important point of encounter between Mozart and Dante Alighieri was certainly his opera Don Giovanni (1787). As Da Ponte himself declared, he had entirely built and re-designed the popular supernatural story on Dante Alighieri's Inferno and modern scholars have written essays dedicated to such prestigious relationship: Mozart, Da Ponte, Dante Alighieri and Don Giovanni.
       In the next weeks, we'll treat all this in details.

                    Part 2 of this article can be read here:
                 Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 2

W.A. Mozart, this powerful Sturm und Drang recitativo+Aria from
Idomeneo (1781), with its vision of Furies was directly inspired by Dante's Inferno identical vision of Furies and the same words have been re-used in the Libretto   

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                    2.b MOZART, DANTE AND THE STURM UND DRANG 2:
                           Mozart, Schweitzer & Idomeneo
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                           Part 1 & 4 of this article can be read here:
                        Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 1
                        Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 4

2.b.a Mozart's position on Sturm und Drang art (1777-1779): Wieland, Schweitzer, Vogler, Rudolf von Habsburg, Gernstenberg and Benda

Another wrong position of various scholars on Mozart is the misconception that Mozart had not any direct role in the evolution of the Genius/Sturm und Drang movement and that he de facto refused to treat the aestethics of art on a theoretical basis.
      In reality, Mozart's personal relationship with Wieland and Schweitzer, the two great masters of the German Genius/Sturm und Drang movement, well determined Mozart's own position and choices on that style. He met them in person in Mannheim during his long European tour 1777/1779.
      Mozart, in winter 1777, reached Mannheim and was very enthusiast with Wieland's and Schweitzer's works and music! Nonetheless, von Heufeld and his father Leopold rapidly informed Wolfgang that the German Schweitzer and Benda were not kept in high consideration in the Austrian Vienna and de facto Mozart's relationship with them might damage his own position at the Austrian Imperial Court.
      Curiously enough, despite Mozart's active role in the Mannheim Opera production of Wieland's and Schweitzer's opera Rosamunde, Mozart's great enthusiasm and admiration for the two great artists progressively decrease in 1778 and, in the end, become a sort of harsh critical disillusion, that leads Mozart to express his personal aesthetic view on their concept of opera, in his letters...
      ... The most curious aspect of this story is that the final theorethical form of criticism of Mozart towards Wieland's and Schweitzer's operas Rosamunde (1777/78-1780: one of the first German Medieval operas) and Alceste (1773) finds identical theorethical positions incredibly expressed by Mozart's rival Vogler (and Genius/Sturm und Drang major theoretician and leader) in his 1780 essay Rheinische Beiträge zur Gelehrsamkeit:
      a. both Mozart and Vogler think that opera overtures must not be in a Baroque heavy old style, but must be an eloquent and dramatically significant prelude to the whole opera (sprechender Eingang), by developing the forms used by Jommelli and Gluck;
      b. both Mozart and Vogler think that Wieland's and Schweitzer's German innovative Genius/Sturm und Drang operas are 50% good and 50% unfortunately affected by various artistic shortcomings, due to a lack of fine aesthetic taste;
      c. both Mozart and Vogler praise not the operas in their 100% enterity, but various single arias and ensembles and recitativi accompagnati of Wieland's and Schweitzer's operas, as certainly expressions of a true original and innovative genius in music!

At this point, we must consider that the major problem, that many people, in the 18th-century, had with the Genius/Sturm und Drang works of art and, in particular, with theatre plays and with operas, was that a lot of these Genius/Sturm und Drang works were intentionaly highly politicized and often in a provocative and unpleasant way: to criticize such works was a common method of guaranteeing one's own political safety before the public authority of princes, kings and emperors.
      The story of Mozart, Wieland, Schweitzer and Vogler and their relationship with the Genius/Sturm und Drang operas was not that different: Wieland's and Schweitzer's Sturm und Drang German gloomy and violent Medieval tragic opera Rosamunde (1777/78-1780) was an intentionally highly politicized music work, intended to personally and politically attack [i.e. the Elector's misconduct with the women at his court!] the same German prince who had commisioned the opera, that Elector Charles Theodore of Mannheim/Munich, from whom Mozart expected to receive some kind of music commission!!!... and that happened in 1780/1781 with Idomeneo!

The politically cautious position of Mozart on the Genius/Sturm und Drang operas is once more revealed by the 1785 affair Rudolf von Habsburg
      In spring 1785, it seems that Mozart himself (who was trying to receive a commission for a new opera) practically rejected a libretto on a Medieval theme by the author of Holzbauer's Gunther von Schwarzburg: the theme was certainly politically risky, being the title of the libretto Kaiser Rudolf von Habsburg, written in a Mannheim/Munich environment that had already been considered a suspect environment (i.e. the Bavarian scandal 1784/1785) and then was going to be practically declared a nest of subversive freemasons and spies in a few months so to lead to the reform of the Freemasonry of December 1785 by the Austrian Emperor. 
      Mozart writes on an Opera on von Habsburg: something like this has to be read through with all possible attention and deliberation… a work like this doesn’t deserve to have been written in vain… (Wolfgang remembers here the 4 years of delays, revisions, reprimands, disputes, quarrels, harsh critics and rewriting for Wieland's and Schweitzer's Rosamunde?).
      How the Medieval theme in Operas, so important for the Natural Original Genius/Sturm und Drang movement and then for the Romanticism, was considered delicate and politically risky can be further well understood by the atrocious exploitation of Gretry’s opera Richard Coeur-de-lion (1784) during the French Revolution: those who dared to sing that music in particular by Gretry were condemed to the guillotine, as king loyalists! Sic! et... probably politically sick!

The period 1777/1779 seems to have been also a period of stylistic and aesthetic choices for Mozart.
      In these years Mozart, who already appreciated Benda as composer, has a direct experience of other famous Genius/Sturm und Drang music works, the melodramas by Benda:
      a. Gerstenberg's/Brandes's/Benda's Ariadne auf Naxos, and
      b. Gotter's/Benda's Medea.
      The enthusiasm of Mozart for this deeply emotional genre was great and highly influenced his artistic choices with works like Zaide, Idomeneo and the Serail and perhaps a still lost work written between 1778 and 1779, the melodrama Semiramis.
      For further details on the relationship of Mozart with Benda's music see Part 1 of this article and the article on Gerstenberg:
       Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 1
       Gersternberg, Dante's Ugolino (1768) and the Manual on Sturm und Drang (1770)

Nonetheless and beside all these considerations, Mozart, as usual, well absorbed all the musical idioms of his time he found new, interesting and potentially useful and artistically good.
       For this reason it's easy to find, in his compositions (especially those of the 1790s), borrowings/quotations from Schweitzer's operas (he had once criticized!) and, in particular, from Benda's works.



2.b.b Mozart's Idomeneo (1781) and the influence of Dante's Divine Comedy
The libretto by Abate Varesco for Mozart's Idomeneo (1781) is certainly a great example of the direct contact of Mozart with the artistic world of Dante's Divine Comedy, with really an impressive reflection on the quality of his own music.
      If, in general, the Italian poets always considered Petrarca a fundamental model on the correct and fine use of the Italian language, just few know that rather Dante Alighieri with his harsher and stronger visual creativeness remained a fundamental linguistic reference, when a high heroic and epic context was to be described.
      We see how in the 18th-century the Italian librettists show a preference for Dante Alighieri, where his powerful poetry can help them in their creation and Abate Varesco and Da Ponte are certainly among those poets.
      A peculiar (and still today unsurpassed!) characteristic of Dante's own poetry is the fact that, even though based on a special rhyme system, Dante's poetry in Italian NEVER sounds as a cantilena (i.e. a sing-song)!... and this was a major problem for the 18th-century German and English translators of Dante's Divine Comedy, who tried to reconstruct in their languages the Italian rhyme system of Dante: they failed to recreate that peculiar magic of a poetry with a rhyme system which is not a cantilena, and wrote translations, in their languages, with rhymes which fatally ended up in a bad cantilena effect, giving thus a distorted image of the original work by Dante.
      If in Petrarca this phenomenon of the rhyme cantilena is here and there perceived, in the works by Marino and by the great Metastasio, the librettist of so many famous operas of the 18th-century, such phenomenon of the rhyme cantilena is sometimes really strong and often even disturbing, when heard without music, i.e. not sung!

Another reason for the Italian opera librettists to keep Dante as reference for their opera librettos was the possibility of finding in Dante powerful and impressive images of action and situations expressed through powerful and impressive Italian words.
      A great example of this is without doubt the recitativo and aria D'Oreste, d'Aiace of Mozart's own Idomeneo 1781. The Italian libretto features Dante's Divine Comedy powerful words and visions, reworked so to fit the story of Idomeneo Elettra in a highly emotional and violent way, a typical mark of the Genius/Sturm und Drang opera!
      Abate Varesco reconstructed the vision of the Furies of Mozart's Idomeneo Elettra creating a mixture between the Greek Aeschylus and the Italian Dante Alighieri, by using the powerful, terrifying and striking image and words) of the Furies depicted by Dante in his Inferno Canto IX: the Furies threaten to destroy Dante before the walls of the inner territories of the Hell.
      Here below you find:
      a. one of the best ever performances of Mozart's Idomeneo
          Recitativo+Aria D'Aiace, d'Oreste, with Nicole Chevalier;
      b. Dante's original text of the Inferno Furies in comparison with Mozart's
          Idomeneo Elettra's Aria;
      c. Medieval illustration of Dante's Furies; 
      d. phylological illustration of Dante's Furies by Flaxman (1793), exactly
          in the poses depicted by Dante;
      e. phylological illustrations of Aeschylus's Furies by Flaxman, with the 
          ghost of killed Clytemnestra arousing the Furies (1793).

The amazing, extra-dramatic and most correct performance of Mozart's Idomeneo Elettra by Nicole Chevalier. 







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                    2.d MOZART, DANTE AND THE STURM UND DRANG 4:
                                                  The Magic Flute and its exotic sources
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                           Part 1 & 2 of this article can be read here:
                        Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 1
                        Mozart, Dante and the Sturm und Drang 2

2.d.a Mozart's The Magic Flute & Dante's Divine Comedy

There have been some attempts to find a direct relationship between Mozart's 1791 masterpiece (The Magic Flute) and Dante's Divine Comedy.
      A paper from 1975 by D. Koenigsberger, A New Metaphor for Mozart's Magic Flute, inspired a certain interest in possible parallels between Dante and Mozart's opera.
      Nonetheless, the unorthodox and controversial approach by M. Soresina (a Milan essayist) can hardly find a scholarly position, despite the Milan media's strong support.
      By following a suggestion by Massimo Mila on a possible parallelism between Beatrice and Pamina, in her book:
Mozart come Dante. Il flauto magico: un cammino spirituale. Bergamo 2012,
she theorizes (going a bit too far, indeed), that the role of Mozart's Pamina is practically identical to that of Dante's Beatrice (!?)... 
      Those, who well know both The Magic Flute and The Divine Comedy, can back an idea of this kind,... only with great difficulty...
      ... As a matter of fact, Dante is completely and totally dependent on Beatrice, seen as an utterly superior and supernatural salvation figure!, Tamino, as we know, is not. Moreover, in Vita Nova, Beatrice probably is also the symbol of some kind of political message to the city of Florence, a message, that only Dante's close friends, like Guido Cavalcanti, etc., could understand; while Pamina is the symbol of a substantial reform of the Freemasonry rite, with a major role of women within the lodges, as various scholars have already well demonstrated... et cetera, et cetera... See Uri Golomb, Feminism, Chauvinism, Masonic Allegory: The Role of Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, Cambridge 2010.
     Moreover, already in the 1790s, the Austrian Police considered Pamina, as an allegory of Liberty, that the people (i.e. the allegory hidden in the character Tamino) had to reconquer, by defeating Louis XVI (the Queen of the Knight)...

2.d.b Mozart's The Magic Flute medieval and oriental sources
However, it is a fact, that behind the inspirational material of The Magic Flute, there's a great amount of medieval and oriental symbols, metaphors, and allegories of various origins, a group even derived from or in common with Dante's Divine Comedy. But, if the case, it must be scholarly demonstrated!
      In the case of Mozart's The Magic Flute, we can, without doubt, link Mozart's opera to the Sturm und Drang environment of various intellectuals and writers of the period, like Patzke, Wieland, Klopstock, Gleim, Rolle, Terrasson, von Born, Anquetil-Dupperon. Certain books of that period were fundamental in this. Besides Wieland, we remember Zoroastrianist (1763/1771) and Halladat (1774).

2.d.c Mozart's The Magic Flute and the alchemy Zoroastrian book Clavis Artis
A position of particular interest is, that of the influential alchemy manuscript of Clavis Artis, spuriously/fictionally attributed to Zoroaster (end of the 17th century/beginning of the 18th century).
      You’ll immediately notice the strong similarities between the illustrations of Zoroaster and the dragon/serpent and the depiction of the environment (the mountains, trees, and grotto, Zoroaster/sun), as seen in the Clavis Artis alchemy book, with the scenes and atmospheres of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
      The very beginning of this book seems to have some connection with the very story of The Magic Flute
      Secret key to many occult operations in the kingdom of animals, in the kingdom of metals, and of minerals.

 

2.d.d Mozart's The Magic Flute and the example of Dante's serpents
An example of possible parallelism between Mozart's The Magic Flute and Dante's Divine Comedy can be the theme of the chasing snake at the beginning of the opera.
      In both cases, a snake chases the victim, but, in Mozart, the snake (probably, during an earlier draft version of the opera, in reality, a lion) is killed, while in Dante the snake catches the victim and then performs the divine punishment, by stealing the identity of the sinner through a horrid metamorphosis.
      In Dante, at the very beginning of the Inferno, Dante has his path blocked by a group of beasts, among them a lion, but they cannot be defined, as beasts literally chasing Dante to kill him (not even the ready-to-leap and hungry lion, the most dynamic figure in this Dante's passage), as it happens with Tamino. However...
      ... for the chasing snake figure, we must go down into Hell up to the Bolgia 7, Canto 34 & 35, those of... the thieves.
      Can we say so that the sin of Tamino is a theft of some kind?
      Can we say so that the sin of Mozart is a theft of some kind?

What we know is that Da Ponte (as we have seen previously) had a profound knowledge of Dante's Divine Comedy and that also Emperor Joseph II had evidently some kind of knowledge of Dante's work, so to understand what was going on between the opera Don Giovanni (1787) and Dante's Inferno.
      It's difficult to say, how much of this Da Ponte's Dantesque knowledge really influenced Mozart and how far.

The snake is blocking Tamino, by chasing him, trying to kill him. But in Dante, at the beginning, three beasts (after a passage of the Bible: Jeremiah 5:6) are blocking Dante's path; while these three beasts are a threat and passive obstacles, they are not actively trying to chase and kill him. As a matter of fact, the lonza, the lion, and the lupa symbolize the three main sections of Hell itself: the lupa is the incontinence, the lion is the violence and bestiality, and the lonza the malice and fraud.
      In Dante the only snakes actively chasing people, in order to catch them (as Mozart's giant snake does), are those of the Bolgia 7 of the thieves.

All these possible similarities...
... are they intentional or fortuitous?

But other considerations may make the whole subject much more complicated:
      A. the allegories and symbolisms of Mozart's The Magic Flute (1791) were interpreted by the Austrian Secret Police, as French Revolution symbolisms against Louis XVI (the real Queen of the Knight) and this opera became one of the motives to ban Freemasonry from Austria in the 1790s: so Tamino might be an aristocrat (seen as a class of thieves by the French Revolution?), convinced to work for Louis XVI with fraud?;
      B. it is a (not too well known) fact that the definitive version of The Magic Flute (autumn 1791), and with all its allegories, was conceived and continuously changed and revised, in such a manner that no accusations of plagiarism (theft?) could be formulated, against Mozart and Shickaneder, by Wenzel Müller, composer of a very very similar opera (practically based on mainly the same sources as The Magic Flute), that premiered in Vienna outskirt in spring 1791: The Magic Zither!

The same considerations are valid also for other Dante/Mozart parallelisms, like the Wall of Fire and Flames and the Cathartic Water, which appear at the end of The Magic Flute and at the end of the Purgatorio as final phases of purification, before being elevated to the Paradise.

Intentional parallelisms or a common Medieval legacy, based on the Four Elements?

Dante, Inferno, Canto 34 & Canto 35:
W. Blake, A giant snake steals the identity of the condemned thief Agnolo Brunelleschi. Is this Dantesque scene inspirational to Mozart's The Magic Flute Riesenschlange chasing Tamino at the beginning of the opera?
 

Mozart, The Magic Flute, 1791
Tamino is being chased by a giant snake.

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                  ILLUSTRATIONS TO DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY
                                               PART 3


 a. William Blake's 113 Dante Illustrations (ca. 1785-1827)
 b. Gustave Doré's 136 Dante Illustrations (1855/1861-1868)
 c. John Flaxman's 111 Dante Illustrations (1793)
 d. Füssli's & Reynolds's Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 e. Botticelli's Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 f. Stradano's 28 Dante Illustrations (ca. 1587/1590 & 1595)
 g. Anthology of Manuscripts Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 h. Anthology of 14th/15th-century Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 i. The Romanticism & the Dante Illustrations (coming soon)
 j. Original Manuscripts & Illuminations (coming soon)

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              3.a WILLIAM BLAKE'S WATERCOLOURS & ENGRAVINGS 
   FOR DANTE ALIGHIERI'S DIVINE COMEDY (ca. 1780-1827)
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The first interest of Blake in Dante's work belongs to ca. 1780s. He was attracted (as many, since Chaucer's own version of this story in the 14th-century, derived from and, at the same time, dedicated to Dante himself) by the episode of the Count Ugolino (which became a fundamental narration for the whole movement of the Sturm und Drang).
       Blake was also an avid (and critic) reader of Boyd's own English translation of Dante's Inferno. He was directly linked to the early Sturm und Drang/anti-French Academy group of Bodmer and Füssli, who was his friend and also an illustrator of both Dante Alighieri and Shakespeare, like Blake. Blake and Füssli was also friends of Flaxman, another important English illustrator of Dante's Divine Comedy in 1790s.
       Blake, after a couple of works in the 1780s, started working on a complete cycle dedicated to Dante in 1820s and left us a Series of completed engravings (7) and of 102 magnificent watercolours, when he died. 

THE DIVINE COMEDY UGOLINO ARTWORKS (ca. 1785-1826/7)
Since Chaucer, Dante's story on Ugolino had an artistic life on its own in the history of the arts. 
       The story was particularly important for all the Sturm und Drang artists of the 18th-century, so that it actually became even an opera in 1796, with music composed by von Dittersdorf. This 18th-century passionate interest in Dante's Ugolino story is known also by the scholars, as Ugolino fever.
       Almost in the same years, Blake conceived and developed a series of artworks dedicated to the story of Ugolino, which are de facto the first approach of Blake to the illustration of Dante's work, he will work on in the last years of his life in the 1820s. Here infra Blake's independent artworks dedicated to the episode of Ugolino.

Blake, Dante's Divine Comedy Ugolino (1790)


Blake, Dante's Divine Comedy Ugolino (1793)


Blake, Dante portrait & Dante's Divine Comedy Ugolino (ca.1800)


Blake, Dante's Divine Comedy Ugolino (1826/27)


NOTE TO BLAKE'S ARTWORKS FOR DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY
It's a series of completed engravings (7) and of 102 magnificent watercolours, unfortunately left in an abandoned status, when he died.
       For this reason, most of Blake's watercolours are unfinished and sometimes just rapidly sketched out with even a very thin light layer of watercolour. Those few almost completed with the intended colours give an idea of the intention of the artist: vibrant and satured colours (see, in particular, fig. 1 and fig. 66).
       Many Divine Comedy artworks are now even almost faded, a bit darkenend and desaturated.
       In an attempt to give a hint of the possible original project idea behind these watercolours (and to reconstruct a possible formal and stylistic unity), we try to present here the thumbnails with enhanced colours; instead, the original watercolours, as full dimension .jpgs, are left, as they really are today. 
       Hope you reader will appreciate this attempt to render this important collection, as it was most likely conceived.

For a detailed comment about the single plates of Blake's illustrations to The Divine Comedy by Dante, you can reach this fundamental site on Blake's art:
http://www.blakearchive.org/

See the 7 Engravings at Inferno Plate No. 21.
INFERNO
72 watercolours

[click on the image to see the original full dimension .jpg]
PURGATORIO
20 watercolours

[click on the image to see the original full dimension .jpg]
PARADISO
10 watercolours

[click on the image to see the original full dimension .jpg]
INFERNO ENGRAVINGS
7 plates

[click on the image to see the original full dimension .jpg]
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              3
.b GUSTAVE DORÉ'S 136 ILLUSTRATIONS
   FOR DANTE ALIGHIERI'S DIVINE COMEDY (1855/1861-1868)
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3.b.a Doré's illustrations for Dante
Doré conceived his version of the illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy in 1855. Then he completed the Inferno series in 1861 and the Purgatorio and the Paradiso in 1868.
      The Dante series was a great success and Doré's personal visual interpretation became particularly influential well into both the 20th- and the 21st-century (e.g. the 1910s movies and the various illustrations and comics books).
      Doré himself (born in Strasbourg in 1832) shows clear signs of influence from the Genius Movement (i.e. Sturm und Drang) and the Romantic Movement (theoretically conceived and developed, in particular, by the two former Sturm und Drang brothers Schlegel, who were among the greatest German scholars and the best German translators of Dante Alighieri; their work on Dante was praised by Schiller in person, one of the most important leaders of the Sturm und Drang).

3.b.b The Ugolino and Paolo and Francesca Plates as Sturm und Drang influence
Among the clear signs of influence, we see Doré's major interest in the stories of Ugolino (Inferno 33) and of Paolo and Francesca (Inferno 5), which both received a detailed visual narration: an exceptional series of 4 plates each for Paolo and Francesca and for Ugolino.
      a. Ugolino was, probably, the best known and most admired section of Dante's Comedy in the 18th-century and important Genius Movement/Sturm und Drang artists made it object of scholarly and theorethical interest and of further artistic production. Among the major artists, who put Dante's Ugolino at the very centre of their theoretical and artistic experience, we remember G. Baretti, J. Reynolds, von Gerstenberg, von Dittersdorf, H. Füssli and W. Blake: for this reason modern scholars define this peculiar period of the 18th-century (between 1780s and 1790s) as Ugolino Fever.
      b. The story of Paolo and Francesca (already presented by Baretti in English in the 1750s) became rather famous, in particular, thanks to Füssli (who dedicated a series of works to the subject) since 1780s and then thanks to Silvio Pellico, who in 1814 (in a peculiar moment of definitive transition from the Genius Movement/Sturm und Drang to the Romanticism, promoted also by the intense propaganda activity of Berchet) managed to transform Dante's story of the two ill-fated lovers into a successful theatre tragedy (not an easy task for various reasons), tragedy, that became inspirational for many Opera Libretti well into the 20th-century.

3.b.c Sturm und Drang artistic models of Doré
Another important element of Sturm und Drang influence on Doré is his use of Michelangelo's particular plasticity and volumes development in his own work on Dante (a path already followed by Füssli) and an apparent similarity between certain dramatic Füssli's choices for Dante's narrations and Doré's ones. Michelangelo, for the Genius Movement and the Sturm und Drang, was the very incarnation and model of the unfettered creative Genius, like Dante himself.
      The fact that Doré chose to produce other important series of engravings on other books (e.g. Ariosto, Milton, Cervantes, Raspe's Baron of Münchausen) once more demonstrates that Doré had well absorbed the type of cultural choices determined by the Genius Movement/Sturm und Drang intellectuals, writers and artists.

Here below we present all the 136 Doré's original engravings for Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

G. Doré, Dante et Virgile dans le neuvième cercle de l'Enfer, 1861


G. Doré, Dante Portrait: 1st Plate of his illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, 1861/1868


INFERNO
75 engravings

[click on the image to see the original full dimension .jpg]
PURGATORIO
42 engravings

[click on the image to see the original full dimension .jpg]
PARADISO
18 engravings

[click on the image to see the original full dimension .jpg]
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                      3
.c JOHN FLAXMAN'S 111 ILLUSTRATIONS
              FOR DANTE ALIGHIERI'S DIVINE COMEDY (1793)
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3.c.a Flaxman and Dante in a «beautiful Gothic taste»

A point some people (and even scholars) sometimes find difficult to understand is that real classicism and Genius/Sturm und Drang were not, in the 18th-century, one against the other: the contrast, as Bodmer himself put very well, was not against the real classicism, but against that invented pseudo-classicism imposed, at a European level, by the French Academy... a French Academy, that considered, with Voltaire, Homer not a poet, but a barbarian without taste (sic!).
     Flaxman, friend of both Füssli and Blake, and his fundamental work on Dante are a great example of how Genius/Sturm und Drang and classicism and even the Gothic Genius sub-current formed a unique universe, where the true unfettered Genius-Artist could express his own art, against the mechanical imposition of the Voltaires of that time and the French Academy.
     As a matter of fact, Flaxman's wife in a letter (31 March 1793) writes about his husband's illustrations for Dante:
«are drawn with simple lines, no Shadow, & treated in the beautiful Gothic taste with the Sentiment of the Poet & Artist united.»
3.c.b Flaxman's illustrations for Dante (1793)
Between 1787 and 1794 Flaxman was in Rome, in order to complete his studies on classical art, and in 1792 Thomas Hope commisioned a series of Illustrations on Dante's Divine Comedy. In 1793 the illustrations by Flaxman were ready with engravings prepared by Tommaso Piroli. The series was published the first time in Rome in 1802 and then published in London in 1807 with the title Compositions from the Divine Poem of Dante.

3.c.c Flaxman: Classicism and Genius/Sturm und Drang (1793)
As we've seen, Flaxman's Dante series was saluted by his wife as a work of beautiful Gothic taste inspired by the sentiment of the true artist and poet.
     Despite the formally clean lines that conjure up Ancient Greek and Roman models and an imposing body plasticity typical of Michelangelo Buonarroti or Signorelli (then re-used by Doré in the 19th-century), Flaxman is capable to convey all the power of the earthly, supernatural and spiritual drama that permeates the incomparable whole poetry masterpiece of Dante's Divine Comedy.
     Few masterly traits guided by his wise hand can create an entire world of emotions and intense drama. Probably we can find in Flaxman's art a few typical characteristics of Mozart's and Haydn's own art in music, but perhaps the great ability in the economy of the art means conveying great drama has certainly something near to Gluck's own creative world.
     Here below a collection of dramatic scenes depicted by Flaxman with a magnificent use of just few strokes, capable of creating an intense story. As you can see, a few solutions by Flaxman are really impressive and sometimes even of a total modern taste, that may be considered even better conceived in the 20th-century and not in 1793.
       You will notice, for example, how the walls of the Hell are depicted through images derived by the most impressive visual demonic vocabulary of Bruegel the Elder, like the disquieting face-like tower with menacing teeth serving as gate for the inner territories of Hell...



Following an artistic program, that seems directly inspired by Bodmer or by Baretti (the great promoters of the Genius movement), in 1793 Flaxman started producing not only illustrations for Dante, but also for Homer and for Aeschylus and other works on Ovid.



3.c.d Flaxman's and his Dante Series influence
This Dante series by Flaxman had a great influence on various artists of the time, who much admired his Genius work. Among them, we remember his friend William Blake, and then Genelli, Pinelli, Girodet, Koch and Jacques-Louis David, that defined the apparent formal naivite of Flaxman's works the greatest expression of the Sublime.
     Other artists who were strongly influenced by Flaxman's art and, in particularly, by his Dante Series (and by his Homer and Aeschylus Series) there were Goya and, in particular, Ingres.
     In the 20th-century probably the Heaven scenes of the 1946 famous British movie A matter of Life and Death (known as Stairway to Heaven in the USA) was directly or indirectly inspired by Flaxman's Dante Series Illustrations.



3.c.e Flaxman's and the influence of the Genius/Sturm und Drang culture
As it was going to happen in 1850s/1860s with Doré, the choices of Flaxman on Dante were certainly influenced by the so called Ugolino Fever of the years 1770s/1780's and by the story of Paolo e Francesca. In fact, both Dante's stories receive a peculiar attention with even two plates dedicated to each episode. 

3.c.f Flaxman's visual phylology and Berchet's concept of Romanticism
A lesser known characteristic of Flaxman's work is its accurate attempt to re-create a visual phylology of the stories he is illustrating.
     Most of painting and Opera productions in the 18th-century was still conditioned by the Late-Renaissance/Baroque common practice of rendering the Greek and Roman Antiquities through vague Ancient Roman stylized/standardized forms of representation. Still for Mozart's Idomeneo 1781 (an Ancient Greek story), as far as we know, the singers were anachronistically dressed in a vague Roman way à la Baroque (see infra Anton Raaff as Mozart's first Idomeneo 1781).



With Flaxman (thanks to his accurate historical research) Homer and Aeschylus characters are depicted in real Ancient Greece outfits in a real Ancient Greece context. 
     With Flaxman, Dante characters are really Medieval men in real Medieval outfits in a real Medieval scenery.
     And this would become a typical trait of distinction of the Romantic movement: as Berchet established in his famous Romanticism Manifesto of 1816, also the real Ancient Classicism is Romanticism, if it is treated with the same real Sentiment and Intention of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, not through the distorted lenses of the French Academy pseudo-classicism... that's to say, to represent the real Romantic intentions and sentiments of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, first of all, you must represent them and their stories through real images and real outfits of their real world.
     And Flaxman, with his Genius/Sturm und Drang/Gothic/Classicist but, at the same time, Romantic phylological works, became extremely famous in 1790s across whole Europe and then a solid model to many great artists of the 19th-century, well into the 20th-century.
     The usual rather derogatory comment of Goethe (the priest of the natural religion of Nature Magic), defining Flaxman, for the wide International success of his phylological engravings, as «the idol of all dilettanti», was a typical expression of Goethe's unpleasant attitude to envy (Goethe was even envious of Mozart's The Magic Flute major success and tried to create a sequel opera written by himself! Among Goethe's well known victims: von Seckendorf, Reichardt, a couple of times even his bosom friend Schiller and it seems he left written a few ambiguous notes of the moral conduct of Mozart, despite his admiration for the composer) and to his personal dislike for anyone treating religious themes, especially if Christian and Catholic ones, like those in Dante's Divine Comedy.
     Goethe's intentionally malicious comment, per converso, is the direct witness of the wide success and influence of Flaxman's works on the International world of art, from William Blake to Jacques-Louis David to Ingres, Delacroix and Doré and many others:
     ... all great masters in their art and none of them «that kind of dilettanti», intended by Goethe in his usual malignity!



3.c.g Flaxman's superior mystical and spiritual atmosphere in Purgatorio and Paradiso
The more sensitive reader of Flaxman's illustrations (like Bindman, 2007) will immediately understand that Flaxman's Dante work is superior to other artists and illustrators (even Doré), because through his peculiar technique (only apparently naive, as David pointed out) Flaxman managed to create a more perfect rendering of the rarified, mystical and spritual atmospheres of Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso, like the magnificent last plate (the number 33 the mystical number of Dante, based of the years of the life of Christ), that is an amazing perfect visual transposition of the conclusion, in a form of transfigured light, of the superior spiritual experience of Dante's journey.




INFERNO
38 engravings

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PURGATORIO
39 engravings

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PARADISO
33 engravings

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                      3
.f STRADANO'S ILLUSTRATIONS
    FOR DANTE ALIGHIERI'S DIVINE COMEDY (ca. 1587/1590 & 1595)
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3.f.a Stradano and the Accademia della Crusca - Florence

Giovanni Stradano (or Johannes Stradanus or Jan van der Straet, 1523-1605) was contacted, in Florence, by Luigi Alamanni, who was working on a new edition of the Divine Comedy for the Accademia della Crusca, after a famous public dispute, led by the young Galileo Galilei, on the exact geography of Dante's Inferno.
       For reasons we don't know, the project of creating a complete set of illustrations for Alamanni was abandoned at some point (perhaps financial problems with Stradano?), soon after the completion of the set for the Inferno.
       Nonetheless, the set of drawings for Dante, left by Stradano, became famous and was highly praised even by Vasari:
       Stradano's illustrations have buon disegno, bonissimi capricci, molta invenzione (good drawing, very good phantasy, much invention).
INFERNO
28 drawings

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                      3
.g ZUCCARI'S ILLUSTRATIONS
    FOR DANTE ALIGHIERI'S DIVINE COMEDY (1586/1588)
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3.g. Federico Zuccari's masterpiece: the 88 fogli (illustrations) for Dante

Federico Zuccari (or Zuccaro, 1539-1609) worked mostly in Rome, Venice, Florence, and in Madrid for the Royal Spanish Court.
       While working in Spain (1586-1588) for King Philip II, Zuccari produced (or rather completed) an amazing series of illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy.
       His Dante Series was then acquired for the Florence Uffizi Palace in 1738 (through a donation of the Medici family), and here in Florence is still today.
       Friend of Palladio, in Florence, completed the frescoes of Vasari (after his death) on the ceiling of the dome of the Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore.
       Zuccari famously didn't like the too-aggressive naturalism of Caravaggio, which often was degraded to a brutal form of disrespectfulness (and, from a certain point of view, probably Zuccari was not too wrong).

18th-century composers used to look at Late Renaissance/First Baroque painters, as an important source of inspiration for their music, always moving from painters like Zuccari/Vasari to Rubens, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio (considered the great master, champion of the wild and rough naturalism in art). In authors like Schubart and Carpani, Gluck's music is considered like paintings by Caravaggio (and second only to Michelangelo/Raffaello/Tintoretto and, or equal, to Giulio Romano), while Hasse's and Vogler's music was a step lower, more similar to Rubens. Vasari's Mannerism should have been seen in the music style of Gretry (the master of all mannerisms), videlicet.

Thanks to the work of the Galleria degli Uffizi, Zuccari's Dante Series was made available in a digitized format.
       Zuccari's Series is Considered the most complete Dante Series, after that by Botticelli and before the incomplete Series by Blake and the marvelous Series by Doré.

Zuccari's outstanding work shines for modernity, novelty, and originality of invention and composition (with a magnificent use of Cinema-style story building, similar to Cinema Long Takes), and for adding Dante's own words on the illustrations, words even used, as actual parts of the illustrations themselves!
       In conclusion, the extremely high-level quality of Zuccari's Dante Work represents an absolute masterpiece of its own in the whole art production by Zuccari itself.

For further comments and explanations about the single fogli, see the site of the Uffizi:
https://www.uffizi.it/mostre-virtuali/dante-istoriato-inferno
https://www.uffizi.it/mostre-virtuali/dante-istoriato-purgatorio
https://www.uffizi.it/mostre-virtuali/dante-istoriato-paradiso

A typical Zuccari's Long Take, representing various actions of the first parts of Divine Comedy on a single foglio, seen as a single take of multiple actions.

A typical Zuccari's Divine Comedy illustration, in all its artistic perfection and power [and with the usual Zuccari's Long Take]. The very personal interpretation of Michelangelo's and Giulio Romano's lessons is extremely evident.
INFERNO
30 drawings

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PURGATORIO
49 drawings

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PARADISO
11 drawings

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