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[9.] This is Dante himself, who had recently had a soul-shaking dream about Beatrice. (back to text)

[10.] Barbara Reynolds, translator, La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 70-1. (back to text)

[11.] From Dante's point of view, there is a kind of triple meaning in Matilda's statement "Here spring is everlasting." Primavera's life on earth was brief, but in the next life she (bearer of the nickname) and her beauty (the meaning of the nickname) and the season (the source of the nickname) are indeed everlasting. (back to text)

[12.] Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante (Noonday Press, 1961), p. 175. Just as John the Baptist preceded Jesus in premature death, so Joan preceded Beatrice in premature death. And just as Joan had once preceded Beatrice into Dante's presence on a real-life street in Florence, so in Canto 28 of Purgatory she precedes Beatrice into Dante's presence in his allegorical Garden of Eden. Williams continues, "The Active Life and the Contemplative are here almost like girls together; and all the learning which Matilda first [in Purgatory 28] and Beatrice [in Purgatory 29-33] after pour out on Dante cannot make them other." (back to text)

[13.] Kathryn Lindskoog, Dante's Divine Comedy, Journey to Joy: Purgatory (Mercer Univ. Press, 1997), p. 166. (back to text)

[14.] Lindskoog, op. cit., p. 162. (back to text)

[15.] Some critics claim that Botticelli's Cupid is aiming his arrow at one of the Three Graces; but the fact that he is blindfolded presumably means that he is not aiming his arrow at any specific target. (back to text)

[16.] Kenneth Clark, The Drawings by Sandro Botticelli for Dante's Divine Comedy: After the Originals in the Berlin Museums and the Vatican (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 8-9. (back to text)

[17.] By Botticelli's day, many Italian cities had inaugurated professorships for the study of The Divine Comedy. (back to text)

[18.] Lives of the Artists, 1568. (back to text)

[19.] The text of each canto was on the rough side of a sheet of parchment, and its illustration faced it on the smooth side of the next sheet of parchment. (back to text)

[20.] Bernard Berenson, "Dante's Visual Images and His Early Illustrators" (The Nation, December 24, 1893). (back to text)

[21.] James is referring to the illustration on p. 143 of Clark's book. (back to text)

[22.] Clive James, From the Land of Shadows (London: Cape, 1982), p. 193. (back to text)

See our sidebar on this topic, What C. S. Lewis Wrote About Botticelli.

Botticelli's "Primavera" appears many places online.

Last Christmas, ChristianityToday.com published Kathryn Lindskoog's "C. S. Lewis on Christmas."

Lindskoog's newsletter, The Lewis Legacy, has some back issues available online.

See also Books & Culture's review of Lindskoog's recent C. S. Lewis books.You can purchase Lindskoog's retelling of Dante's Purgatory at Amazon.com and other booksellers.

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February (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44