Antique Bronze Dante Alighieri Bust on Marble Base. The name is split into two parts across the upper chest. 

Condition: Gaping hole in head and small holes below, a common feature in reproductions of the original death mask cast made in the 19th Century.

Size: 12 x 6 1/2 x 10 in. 

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was an Italian poet, writer, and philosopher from Florence, widely regarded as the father of the Italian language. Best known for his Divine Comedy (1320), Dante wrote in the vernacular at a time when Latin dominated literature, helping standardize Italian and influence European literature, theater, and art. His works, inspired in part by his unrequited love for Beatrice, introduced the terza rima rhyme scheme and explored themes of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Condemned to exile by the Pope, he spent his final years in Ravenna, where he preserved his literary legacy, later championed by Petrarch and Boccaccio as part of the tre corone of Italian literature.

Gaping hole in head and small holes below, a common feature in reproductions of the original death mask cast made in the 19th Century.

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