Draft:Portrait of Dante

The Portrait of Dante is a painting attributed to Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli. It was painted around 1495 and is currently held by a private collection in Geneva, Switzerland. Although little is written or known about it, Joseph Luzzi has considered it “one of the world's most recognizable renditions of [Dante]”.

Description
Dante is depicted wearing a red cloak and cap with a laurel wreath over and a white bonnet underneath. As with other traditional depictions, he is shown with an aquiline nose. He was probably inspired by Domenico di Michelino’s portrait of Dante, which was the first to depict him with a laurel wreath. That portrait was done around 1465 and is held in the Florence Cathedral.

The painting was likely meant to be adorned in a scholar’s library, although the person who commissioned it is unknown. The painting was done near the end of Botticelli’s illustrations of the Divine Comedy.

Provenance
Much of the portrait’s provenance for the first few centuries of its existence is unknown. It is known that for some time until the mid-20th century, it circulated through multiple British art collections. The portrait’s first known owner was [Seymour] of London, who owned it until 1892. It was then held in the Langton Douglas Collection until 1930. Afterwards, the Burns Collection owned the portrait until a few years prior to 1965. It is currently in the Martin Bodmer collection located in Geneva, Switzerland.