Christianizations of Classical Antiquity: historicities of the mural painting of Hell in the Strozzi di Mantova Chapel (c. 1350-1357)

• Grant number: 22/14026-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2023
• End date: August 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Maria Cristina Correia Leandro Pereira
• Grantee: Bruno dos Santos Menegatti
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/03436-9 - Integrating Poetry: An incorporative approach to documentary and visual evidence of the Dominican reception of ancient and vernacular poetry in Santa Maria Novella (14th century), BE.EP.MS

Abstract

The present project aims to analyze the mural painting of Hell from the Strozzi di Mantova Chapel (1350-1357) located in the Dominican Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The image is a segment of the cycle of frescoes of the Last Judgment of that chapel and, continuously, has been understood by historiography as a cult of the verses of Dante Alighieri, due to the prestige and popularity quickly achieved by Commedia. However, such an approach leaves aside the broad criticism of the poet and his excessive use of poetry and ancient mythology in sermons and in Dominican regiments of the 14th century.Therefore, the analysis of the image will be conducted by the construction of a documentary corpus of material, visual and textual sources from the 14th century, in order to support a new hypothesis of how and why the Dominicans institutionally censored the Commedia reading and visually readjusted, above all, the classical figures in representations incongruous with the descriptions given by Dante. This situation is controversial, since both Dante was an informal attendee of the Dominican school of Santa Maria Novella, and Christian literature and images never ceased to be nourished by the classical tradition in their visions of the beyond. The question that arises, therefore, is the formal differences that we can assess in the comparison of these records of appropriations from Classical Antiquity, in order to clarify the critical and apological character of the Inferno painting, as well as how it corroborates or renounces the inferred context of controversy between the poet and theologians of the 14th century.