Abstract: Focusing on two notable elements of Botticelli's San Barnaba altarpiece - the inscription on the steps to Mary's throne and the fictive gilded reliefs in the roundels above Mary's head - Watts asserts that Botticelli accomplishes two goals: he uses Dante's Paradiso to recast a conventional religious subject and he participates in the ongoing debate on the relative values of painting and poetry. The inscription on Mary's throne cites Dante directly; it reads "VERGINE MADRE, FIGLIA DEL TUO FIGLIO," the first verse of St. Bernard's prayer to the Virgin in Paradiso 33. The reliefs above the Virgin's throne refer to Dante obliquely; they depict the Annunciation in much the same way that the sculpted terrace was said to in Purgatorio 10, and they thus resemble the Annunciation relief in Botticelli's illustration of the canto. Botticelli's representation of Mary in the altarpiece is then elucidated by Dante's own representation of her on the terrace of pride and in the Empyrean. As a result, her humility is underscored and the causal relationship between her humble stance at the Annunciation and her exalted position as the Queen of Heaven is made manifest. Dante's text finally stands as an exegesis of Botticelli's altarpiece, revealing the allegorical significance of Mary in her various aspects. Watts concludes by asserting that Botticelli's use of Dante allows him to present word and image as "analogous modes of figural allusion"; the image can be as polysemous as the text. Botticelli thus challenges Dante's subordination of image to word in the Commedia through Dante's words themselves.
Abstract from the American Dante Bibliography 1998
Reproduced by courtesy of the Dante Society of America