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Abstract
The study proposes an original interpretation of the demonic representations included in a 14th-century manuscript of Dante’s Inferno (the Chantilly manuscript), crafted by the Tuscan Carmelite friar Guido da Pisa, one of the earliest exegetes of the Divina Commedia, and an elite Tuscan painter, identified by art historians either with Buonamico Buffalmacco or Francesco Traini. Through an in-depth analysis of the demonic pictures of the codex, as expressed in both words and images, the study reveals the complex rhetorical artifices and interdiscursive connections of its didactic demonic imagery, employed to construct a memorable moral manual for the education of the preeminent dedicatee of the manuscript, the Genoese political leader Lucano Spinola.
After discussing the main features of the Chantilly manuscript and the history behind its making, the study shows how the written texts of the codex re-elaborate the contents of Dante’s Inferno in order to configure a coherent moral system, constructed upon the rhetorical models of sermon literature and the manuals on the virtues and the vices. In this section, the study begins to reveal how fundamental the dantesque demons are for structuring the moral system and making it memorable. Subsequently, the study argues that the demonic miniatures of the codex—mostly unique in the tradition of the Divina Commedia early manuscripts—interact with the written texts in such a way as to establish sophisticated intramedial, intratextual and intertextual connections. In the same fashion as the multimedia paintings of contemporary preachers and artists, particularly the Pisan ones, these connections provide further material and contexts to the reader for contemplating, comprehending and remembering the essential moral lessons envisioned by the authors. In the case of the Chantilly manuscript, this makes up a multimedia work that is not only a commentary on Dante’s Inferno, but also a complex intersection of genres and media, conceived for educating and warning the ruler Lucano Spinola against the dangers of demonic habits and thoughts.
The discussion provides an intriguing way to look at the flexible boundaries of literary genres and media in the late Middle Ages, and it offers new insights on the early reception of Dante’s demonology, utilized in the Chantilly manuscript both as an intellectual exercise of redemption against evil, and as an implicit form of social and political criticism of the ruling classes.
