ARTE, POLITICA, CULTURA NEI GIARDINI DI VILLA MELZI D’ERIL A BELLAGIO. IL MONUMENTO A DANTE E BEATRICE DI GIOVANNI BATTISTA COMOLLI, 1810

Abstract

On the occasion of the double anniversary - the seven hundred years since the death of Dante Alighieri and the two hundred years since the death of Napoleon Bonaparte - the essay deals with the monument of Dante and Beatrice sculpted by the neoclassical artist Giovanni Battista Comolli in 1810. His client was Francesco Melzi d’Eril, former Vice President of the Italian Republic (1802-1804), then Grand Chancellor Keeper of Seals of the Kingdom of Italy (1805-1814). Located in the gardens of the Villa Melzi d’Eril in Bellagio on Lake Como, the monument features the meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Canto XVIII of Paradiso, when the woman soothes the poet for the prophecy of exile announced by his ancestor Cacciaguida. The paper highlights how this subject implies on the part of the client the desire to celebrate the poet and his work as expressions of Italian values, at a time when Napoleon’s authoritarian turn had disappointed his aspirations for the country’s greater independence. The sculpture also marks some artistic novelties and, as a whole, can be considered an early example of a monument specifically designed around Dante and his Commedia, anticipating the artistic success of the poet in the following decades of the Nineteenth century.