| This thesis studies the numerous illustrations found in a fourteenth-century, study-book manuscript of the Divine Comedy, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M676, related designs by Botticelli, and as found in other manuscripts. It recognizes that these works include willful misrepresentations of Dante's text and its accompanying commentary, often contradicting or subverting its meaning. Yet it is obvious from internal evidence that the artists had a clear understanding of the verses being illustrated. Willful misrepresentations of this sort have not received analytical attention in the literature concerning manuscript illustrations of the Divine Comedy.;The thesis demonstrates, through the medium of contemporary writings, that these “intentional errors” represent a pedagogical technique that evolved from Ciceronian rhetoric. Willful misrepresentation is only one of at least five such pedagogical tools used in the images of M676 and by Botticelli; the others are segmentation, transition, earnestness and repetition. The study illustrates the use of each technique and labels their use collectively as the “Art of Rhetoric.” Didactic manuscript illustrations of the Divine Comedy cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the artist's application of these techniques.;Similar in concept to willful misrepresentation, some illustrations in M676 are purposefully enigmatic: generally related to the text but not to specific verses. Images of this sort represent a pedagogical technique derived from a medieval acculturation to symbolism and obscurity, much as in the use of parables.;The study also recognizes that at least twelve of Botticelli's sixty-one drawings to Purgatorio and Inferno (c. 20%) exhibit correspondences in composition, posture, or gesture with those found in M676. Similarly, Botticelli's radical change in style in many of his illustrations to Paradiso finds a precursor in the stylistic change of a similar quality seen in M676.;Finally, the dissertation clarifies disputed issues concerning the M676 place of origin, its provenance, the dating of its historiated initials, its collation, and the textual relationship of many of its illustrations. Both a revised current collation and an original collation, incorporating missing folios, are proposed. |
