Santa Margherita dei Cerchi, or Dante’s Church
Approached off the via Dante, on the other side of the street to Casa Dante - itself a fascinating approximation of the house in which Dante grew up - this tiny church is often referred to as 'the church of unrequited love' in memory of the writer and poet, Dante’s adoration of his muse, Beatrice Portinari, whose family church this was. The church is unassuming from the outside and plainly clad in pietra serena inside and contains many painted images and inscriptions relating to Dante's depth of feeling for Beatrice. Those thwarted in love can write letters to Beatrice, seeking her intervention, and leave them in a basket, placed near the tombs of Beatrice’s father and nurse.
Having met Beatrice for the first time when she was 8, or 9 and again as a young woman, Dante held his love for her to the highest standards, despite being married himself. His devotion was all the more pure for being platonic. Beatrice died when she was 24 but she lives forever as the poet's companion in Paradise, the third part of his Divine Comedy. In an earlier work, Vita Nuova, Dante describes his love for Beatrice as if he was pouring his heart out to an old friend making the power of his feelings enduringly relatable.
“And when I perceived her, all my senses were overpowered by the great lordship that Love obtained, finding himself so near unto that most gracious being, until nothing but the spirits of sight remained to me.”
A poet of the people, Dante insisted on writing in his own language so his fellow countrymen could have access to and ownership of his words without the filter of the church or the Latin-speaking intelligentsia.
In the 19th century, his Anglo-Italian namesake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, popularised Dante's work through his paintings and poetry, with a particular focus on his relationship with Beatrice. Rossetti translated Vita Nuova in 1864. Rossetti’s painting, Beata Beatrix in the Tate, casts his wife, Elizabeth Siddall in the role of the dying Beatrice (Siddall, too, was to die young, of an overdose of laudanum - the dove on her lap holds a white poppy in its beak). The setting of the painting is Florence - the Ponte Vecchio can be glimpsed in the misty background, and the figure of Dante stands in the shadows to the right, consoled by the figure of Love, dressed in red, on the left.
The artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which Rossetti was a founding member, were striking in their acceptance and support for female agency and independence in mid 19th century Britain. In many of their works which feature a female protagonist, the woman is often making a moral judgement for herself and through her, the viewer. Other examples include Holman Hunt’s Awakening Conscience, Millais’ Mariana or Rossetti’s Found!
*https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-beata-beatrix-n01279
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