“Vidi questo globo tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante.”
“Saw this globe so pitiful of semblance, that perforce it moved my smiles.”
(Paradise XXII, 134-135)
Dante’s Divina Commedia is unanimously considered a literary masterpiece, that inspired countless readers, authors, artists, and scholars throughout the centuries, without experiencing a decline in influence and consideration since its first edition was published, over 700 years ago.
The artistic merits of this manuscript are manifold and, as such, have always attracted the attention of experts of all kinds, leading to the continuous discovery and re-discovery of an invaluable work of art – whose splendour and brilliance never seems to cease.
One fascinating dimension that might appear understudied – if compared to others – lies in how Dante pictured the world of his time throughout the Divine Comedy.
Beyond its literary grandeur, The Divine Comedy provides a fascinating and complex portrayal of the world – a synthesis of medieval science, cartography, and Christian cosmology. In this article, we will briefly explore how Dante conceived his globe, not merely as a geographic entity but as a symbolic and spiritual construct.
Globe and wonder in Dante
Indeed, the Florentine author's magnum opus offers us a priceless testimony of how Dante envisioned his world – a vision that reflects the understanding of his contemporaries – painting a sharp picture of the medieval worldview.
A culture that, as we shall see, skilfully eludes easy classifications of convenience, standing on the cusp of tremendous and far-reaching transformations, which both shaped and originated in medieval society and its people.
However, while the image of Dante's globe may come to mind even to the less experienced reader - albeit faintly - by recalling the famous division between hell, purgatory and paradise that determines the tripartite structure of the tome, much less appreciated is the peculiar perspective from where Dante animates his vision of both the earthly and the unearthly realms.
In fact, the divine Poet was not only a man deeply embedded in the culture, values and ideals of his time, but also nurtured a boundless curiosity rivalling that of any great scholar. It is precisely under this interpretative lens, emphasising the overwhelming sense of wonder he felt towards all things known and all things unknown, that Dante's depiction of the world gains a further layer of charm and fascination.
This sense of wonder did not limit itself to philosophical musings; it extended to his conception of the physical world, where medieval geography, ancient cosmology, and religious symbolism merged into a single, unified vision.
The Globe and its Origins: Ptolemy, Aristotle and the T-O maps
Although he was certainly not lacking in inventiveness, Dante naturally drew upon the cosmological and geographical theories of his time to inspire his depiction of the world as a globe. In particular, he relied on the Ptolemaic model, whose geocentric vision placed the Earth at the centre of the universe.
According to this view, the Northern Hemisphere (boreal) was bordered to the east by the Ganges River and to the west by the Pillars of Hercules, while the Southern Hemisphere (austral) was entirely covered by water and, therefore, unexplored and uninhabited by humans.
The Christian worldview of the time –reconciled by medieval scholars with the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian conception – gave rise to numerous representations of the Earth throughout the Middle Ages, particularly in the form of so-called T-O maps.
In these highly imaginative depictions, the vertical arm of the “T” represented the Mediterranean Sea, positioned between Europe and Africa, while the horizontal arm corresponded to the Don and Nile Rivers. A large “O” – the ocean – encircled all the known landmasses, while at the very centre stood the Holy City par excellence: Jerusalem.
It would be challenging to assume that these widely circulated and well-known maps did not inspire the conception of the Dantean globe, where the division between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres remains unchanged – except for the presence of the Purgatory Mountain in the latter - and Jerusalem stays firmly at the centre of creation, beneath which lies the inverted cone of Hell.
Behind the Globe: An Immutable Faith, a World in the Making
Nonetheless, Dante’s era was far more dynamic and intellectually rich than the common – but misleading – perception of the Middle Ages as the ‘Dark Ages’ suggests. On the contrary, European merchants and explorers were inaugurating an age of exploration of unprecedent scale, that would culminate centuries later in the discovery of the new world.
In the same period, the fabled explorer Marco Polo was writing – or better, dictating – The Million, first published in 1298, which contained tales on a great variety of uncharted and alien lands, reaching as far as China and Japan. As a result, Dante also had at his disposal more updated and detailed maps, running parallel to the traditional T-O models and mainly used to represent foreign trade routes and deal opportunities for Europeans merchants. These alternative sources did not go untapped by the insatiable intellect of the Poet, whose depiction of the otherworldly realms leverages all sorts of earthly analogies.
Yet, the Dantean globe, just like medieval maps, is not simply a geographical depiction of the world. Instead, it holds a deep symbolic value, reminiscent of the immanent scholarly efforts to adapt reality to the one, true compass of medieval beliefs and most firmly held convictions: the Christian faith.
While Dante incorporated existing geographical models, his primary concern was not scientific accuracy but rather the theological and poetic significance of space. His world is mapped not just by latitudes and longitudes, but by divine order and moral hierarchy.
In an ingenuous but admirable impetus of ‘rational optimism’, Dante – as well as his contemporaries – posed no boundaries to his vision, aiming to represent the world in the perfectly ordered way that God intended. Following this volition, we can begin to comprehend the reasons behind the vastity and depth of his depiction, that spanned hell, heaven, and earth with a confidence and faith that the modern man has inevitably lost – fully embracing the benefits and burdens of progress.
Thus, guided by a sense of love and wonder – directed toward God and its creation – Dante was convinced that every man could reach paradise and become enlightened. This view is reflected in the two verses in Book XXII of Paradise, in which Dante is invited by Beatrice to look down on the earth he had left behind, once so immense and unknown. With new, wiser eyes, the Poet recalls: “(I) saw this globe so pitiful of semblance, that perforce it moved my smiles”.
The Mundane and The Ultramundane: Dante’s Globe Everlasting Wonder
What’s perhaps even more extraordinary than imagining the world Dante so carefully depicted is his meticulous attention to detail – a quality long regarded as both demanding and essential to artistic mastery. And in Dante’s case, the Devil is quite literally in the details.
To accomplish this feat so flawlessly, it was not the passion for the unknown and uncharted, but rather the one for all things known that came in rescue of the Poet. Leveraging his incredibly extensive knowledge of Italian lands and territories, spanning from the natural elements – such as the Apennines, defined as ‘the bones of Italy’ – to the Italian cities growing at a stellar rate – Florence, Venice, Rome and many others – Dante was able to restore a vision of the otherworldly that is alive and pulsating through the constant references to places and coordinates firmly anchored in reality, so that the Comedy could easily stimulate the imagination of his contemporaries, while at the same time serving as a precious testimony of that world for times to come.
This may indeed be the last heritage of an unsurpassed work of art, the Divine Comedy, which was already a priceless legacy to the world - considering that the year of its first known publication, 1321, is also the year of the Supreme Poet's death.
Dante’s globe is thus more than a medieval mappaemundi– it is a poetic vision, a spiritual construct, a geography of wonder that outlived its author, continually enriched for posterity not only through the discovery and appreciation of the known world but also through the rediscovery of a medieval vision, both alien to our own and yet deeply connected to the very land we still walk today.
.avif)