Resumen de Dante as "Auctor" in Musée Condé MS 597
The prefatory miniatures in Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 597, a manuscript that dates from about 1327-28 and comprises an uninterrupted text of Dante's Inferno followed by a presentation copy of Guido da Pisa's commentary on it, offer an extraordinarily articulate response to perhaps the most hotly contested issue in Dante studies—the poet's claims to truth and authority. Critics have long debated the degree to which Dante may have expected audiences to believe that he actually experienced a divinely sanctioned trip through the afterlife. Some scholars have sought to bolster their position by invoking one or more of the eighteen commentaries that survive from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but few have examined the responses of another early audience, manuscript illuminators. By manipulating perspective and other pictorial elements, miniaturists often expressed viewpoints that are distinct from those of the commentators, including the many commentators who were hired to select the iconography of the illustrations. For example, by carefully crafting the poses, expressions, and framing of the prefatory images in Musée Condé MS 597, its illuminators reinforce and at times enlarge on Guido's interpretation of the Commedia as a true account of a journey through the afterlife. By departing from the focus of most extant suggestions to medieval illuminators, they augment Guido's portrayal of Dante as a largely passive agent of God, greatly expand our understanding of early responses to the Commedia, and demonstrate the tremendous sophistication with which medieval illuminators could interpret even the most subtle of texts.
