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“The Salutation of Beatrice” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: it was not Beatrice who had goiter but her model

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Beatrice, the Florentine woman to whom Dante Alighieri dedicated most of his poetry, was glorified in La Divina Commedia, completed 40 years after their presumed first reciprocal sight. Beatrice, usually… Click to show full abstract

Beatrice, the Florentine woman to whom Dante Alighieri dedicated most of his poetry, was glorified in La Divina Commedia, completed 40 years after their presumed first reciprocal sight. Beatrice, usually identified as Beatrice Portinari belonging to a noble and rich family, was married to Simone de’ Bardi and died at the age of 24. The sublimation of Dante’s spiritualized love crosses the entire literary and poetic Dante’s production https:// www. brita nnica. com/ biogr aphy/ Beatr iceItali annoble. The English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of nonacademic painters formed in 1848. https:// www. brita nnica. com/ biogr aphy/ DanteGabri elRosse tti. Married to Elisabeth Siddal, dead precociously in 1862 for an overdose of laudanum, the artist considered successively his love for his wife similar to Dante’s mystical and idealized love for Beatrice as is evident from the symbolic painting Beata Beatrix (1863), a faithful portrait of Elisabeth, now in the Tate Gallery, London. http:// www. rosse ttiar chive. org/ docs/ s168. rap. html. The interest of Rossetti for the medieval culture and for the Dante’s idealized love is testified by several painting dedicated to the representation of Beatrice. The painting entitled The Salutation of Beatrice (Fig. 1) depicts a beautiful young woman exhibiting a visible thyroid enlargement, not present in Beata Beatrix, the model of which was the artist’s wife, belonging to the London urban upper class. On the contrary, the model of the Salutation was a beautiful country girl, Jane Burden the daughter of a groom and a waitress, coming from Oxford countryside who became the favorite model of Rossetti and other artists of the Brotherhood, including William Morris who married her in 1859 https:// www. brita nnica. com/ biogr aphy/ Willi amMorrisBriti shartistandauthor. Jane Morris was undoubtedly goitrous as easily deduced by inspecting a photography (circa 1865) and a portrait (1904) when the woman was 65 years (Fig. 2). Despite the frequent occurrence of goiter in females, even and particularly at the time of Dante Alighieri [1], who do not have any evidence that Beatrice was goitrous. In contrast, in Rossetti’s time and for many decades after, it was not uncommon for real-life or idealized painters’ models to exhibit evident thyroid enlargement [2, 3].

Keywords: rossetti; beatrice; dante; model; salutation; dante gabriel

Journal Title: Journal of Endocrinological Investigation
Year Published: 2021

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