Beatrice Portinari

Beatrice "Bice" di Folco Portinari[1] (Italian: [be.aˈtriːtʃe]; 1265 – 8 June 1290) was an Italian woman who has been commonly identified as the principal inspiration for Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova, and is also commonly identified with the Beatrice who appears as one of his guides in the last book of the Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia), Paradiso, and in the last four canti of Purgatorio.

Beatrice Portinari
Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Born
Beatrice di Folco Portinari

c.1265
Florence, Republic of Florence
Died8 June 1290 (age 25)
Florence, Republic of Florence
Other namesBice (nickname)
Known forInspiration for Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy
Spouse(s)Simone dei Bardi (m.1287)
Parent(s)Father: Folco di Ricovero Portinari

Biography

Beatrice was the daughter of the banker Folco Portinari and was married to another banker, Simone dei Bardi. Dante claims to have met a "Beatrice" only twice, on occasions separated by nine years, but was so affected by the meetings that he carried his love for her throughout his life. The tradition that identifies Bice di Folco Portinari as the Beatrice loved by Dante is now widely, though not unanimously, accepted by scholars. Boccaccio, in his commentary on the Divine Comedy, was the first one to explicitly refer to the woman; all later references are dependent on his unsubstantiated identification. Clear documents on her life have always been scarce, rendering even her existence doubtful. The only hard evidence is the will of Folco Portinari from 1287, which says, "Item d. Bici filien sue et uxoris d. Simonis del Bardis reliquite [...], lib.50 ad floren." The sentence is essentially a bequest to Portinari's daughter, who was married to Simone dei Bardi. Portinari was a rich banker, born in Portico di Romagna. He moved to Florence and lived in a house near Dante where he had six daughters. Portinari also gave generously to found the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.

In the works of Dante Alighieri

Scholars have long debated whether the historical Beatrice should be identified with the Beatrice of Dante's writing. Certainly Beatrice Portinari fits the broad biographical criteria, and it's entirely possible that she and Dante knew each other— but the Beatrice of Dante's canon doesn't seem to rely on any such correspondence and exists as a literary character who bears only a passing resemblance to her historical antecedent.[2]

Vita Nuova

Beatrice first appears in the autobiographical text La Vita Nuova, which Dante wrote around 1293. The Vita Nuova's autoethnographical poetry and prose present Beatrice, and the poet's passion for her, in the context of Dante's own social and romantic reality. Dante's portrayal of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova is unambiguously positive, but at this early stage resembles the more generic attitude of the courtly lady, rather than the sharply defined personality for which Beatrice is famous in the Commedia.[3]

According to Dante, he first met Beatrice when his father, Alighiero di Bellincione, took him to the Portinari house for a May Day party. They were both nine years old at the time, though Beatrice was a few months younger. Dante was instantly taken with her and remained so throughout his life in Florence—even though she married another man, the banker Simone de' Bardi, in 1287.[2] For his part, Dante married Gemma Donati, a cousin of one of the most politically prominent families in Florence, in 1285.[4] Despite this entanglement, he seems to have retained some feeling for Beatrice, even after her death in 1290. As Dante tells us in the Vita Nuova, he withdrew into intense study after Beatrice's death and began composing poems dedicated to her memory. The collection of these poems, along with others he had previously written in praise of Beatrice, became what we now know as the Vita Nuova.[3]

The manner in which Dante chose to express his love for Beatrice, in both the Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy, often agrees with the medieval notion of courtly love. Courtly love was very formal: a sometimes secret, often unrequited, and always respectful form of admiration for a lady. It is also first and foremost a literary conceit, rather than an actual form of intimacy. It was not uncommon for the lady in question to have no idea of her courtly admirer, and for the admirer in question not to be interested in a real relationship at all. Instead, the courtly lady serves as an excuse for the lover to exercise his poetic skill, or even to discuss philosophy, in the practice of praising her. Whether or not Dante had any feelings for his neighbor Beatrice Portinari, courtly love is the modality he chooses to convey his passion, which suggests a degree of remove (at least) between historical reality and autobiographical narrative.[5]

Beatrice appears to Virgil at the start of Inferno, in an illustration by Gustave Doré.

Divine Comedy

In the Divine Comedy, Beatrice takes over as guide from the Latin poet Virgil because, as a pagan, Virgil cannot enter Paradise.[6] Moreover Beatrice, being the incarnation of beatific love (as her name implies), is uniquely suited to lead the pilgrim into the realm of divine bliss. In Dante's autobiographical narrative, Beatrice was the first to direct his love towards the divine, and it was her intervention on his behalf that redirected him towards the straight path of correct desire by sending Virgil to rescue him from the dark wood of Inferno 1.[2] Naturally, then, it's Beatrice who must lead the pilgrim into heaven. Where Virgil is understood as human reason and philosophy, Beatrice represents religious knowledge and passion: theology, faith, contemplation, and grace.[6] Philosophy is suited to guide the pilgrim through the less holy realms of sin and repentance, but because faith is definitionally out-of-bounds for Virgil (and for human reason more broadly), he cannot lead Dante on this last leg of his journey.

Though she does represent divine love, Beatrice's appearance in the Garden of Eden in Purgatorio 30 is hardly a joyous reunion with her earthly lover. She castigates him for weeping when his beloved Virgil disappears, and then for abandoning her memory after her death and indulging in sin to such a degree that she had to intercede on his behalf to save him.[1] Dante compares her direction of the pageant of the Church in the Garden to an admiral commanding his ship, an unusual masculine simile that has troubled the critical reading of Beatrice as courtly lady.[7] Her frequent and eloquent digressions on all manner of academic subjects in Paradiso also diverges significantly from the typical trope of the courtly beloved, who exists as an object of praise, rather than a subject of discourse.[8]

Legacy and reception

Modern art

Beatrice Portinari has been immortalized not only in Dante's poems but in paintings by Pre-Raphaelite masters and poets in the nineteenth century. Subjects taken from Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova (which Rossetti had translated into English) and mostly the idealization of Beatrice Portinari had inspired a great deal of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's art in the 1850s, in particular after the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. He idealized her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix.

Dante and Beatrice, by Henry Holiday (1883). Dante looks longingly at Beatrice (in center) passing by with friend Lady Vanna (red) along the Arno River

Beatrice has also been immortalized in space, as asteroid 83 Beatrix is named in her honor.[9]

The Dante Alighieri Academy Beatrice Campus, a Catholic high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada is named after Portinari.

In A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, Snicket's love interest is named Beatrice, after Portinari. The relationship between the characters is very similar to that of Beatrice and Dante.

In the 2014 animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall the woods called the Unknown is implied multiple times throughout the series to be some form of afterlife. Here, the main characters Wirt and Greg are guided through the Unknown by a bluebird named Beatrice.

References
  1. "Dante Alighieri on the Web". Greatdante.net. Archived from the original on 2013-08-30. Retrieved 2013-09-04.
  2. Lansing, Richard, ed. (2010-09-13). Dante Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-136-84972-5.
  3. Lansing, Richard, ed. (2010-09-13). Dante Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 874. ISBN 978-1-136-84972-5.
  4. Lansing, Richard, ed. (2010-09-13). Dante Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 432. ISBN 978-1-136-84972-5.
  5. Lansing, Richard, ed. (2010-09-13). Dante Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 236. ISBN 978-1-136-84972-5.
  6. Lansing, Richard, ed. (2010-09-13). Dante Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 862. ISBN 978-1-136-84972-5.
  7. Adoyo, C.A. (2021). "Beatrice ammiraglio: Master and Commander of Poetic Authority in Dante's Commedia". Per acque nitide e tranquille : The Free Will and Subjective Agency of Women in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature. XLII.
  8. Barolini, Teodolinda (2006-11-15), "Notes Toward a Gendered History of Italian Literature, with a Discussion of Dante's Beatrix Loquax", Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, Fordham University Press, pp. 360–378, retrieved 2021-12-22
  9. Schmadel, Lutz D. (2013). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 31. ISBN 9783662066157.

Further reading
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