The Renaissance established a sort of iconography for Dante’s physiognomy, where his features are roughly based on Boccaccio’s unflattering report, and where his stern and superior look seems more of a psychological expression of the more polemical parts of the Inferno than human norm.
The nineteenth-century discovery of a fresco attributed to the school of Giotto in the Bargello, however, suggested the possibility of a more flattering portrait. The famous feature in Boccaccio’s description, the naso aquilino, is absent, and Dante appears thoughtful and mild.
A few years ago, another fresco was restored--in the palazzo next door to the Bargello, the Palazzo dell'Arte dei giudici e notai. This portrait resembles the Bargello portrait--no aquiline nose. The palazzo, which now doubles as a restaurant and museum, publicized the fresco as the “oldest portrait of Dante,” but there is an important qualification: it is the oldest documented portrait of Dante. The Bargello's is still the oldest, although you cannot admire this older portrait while enjoying a dish of tortelli ripieni di ricotta di bufala profumati alla cannella in guazzetto di moscardini like you can at the Ristorante “Alle Murate” in the Palazzo dell’Arte dei giudici e notai.
Last year, forensic scientists in Bologna made another step in correcting Dante’s face, or, as one of the anthropologists says, “we have restored Dante’s humanity to him.” In the 1920’s, an earlier Bolognese anthropologist had obtained permission to exhume Dante’s skull and make a study of the cranium. Only last year, however, did contemporary anthropologists, with the help of engineers and graphic designers, turn these cranial studies into a 3-D model which shows a face with a large and distorted (but not aquiline) nose.
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