- 96
Felice Giani San Sebastiano Curone 1758 - 1823 Rome
Description
- Felice Giani
- paolo and francesca
inscribed on the open book in black ink: La bocca mi/bacio tutto trema-/nte. Galeotto fu il/Libro, e chi lo scrisse/Qel giorno piรบ non vi/leggevamo avante
- pen and black ink and brown wash, heightened with white
Catalogue Note
This scene is taken from Canto V of Dante's Inferno. Francesca da Rimini was betrothed to the deformed Giancotto Malatesta, but fell in love with his brother Paolo when they sat reading together. We see the lovers at the moment before Giancotto entered unexpectedly and, in a rage, stabbed them to death. The murderer is depicted approaching the pair in another version of the subject by Giani, in the Ratjen Collection (see P. Dreyer et al, Stiftung Ratjen, Italienische Zeichnungen des 16.-18. Jahrhunderts, exhibition catalogue, Vaduz 1977, pp. 248-9, cat. no. 115). Dante knew Paolo, and Francesca's brother, and in the Divine Comedy portrayed the tragic lovers forever swept along by the wind in the second circle of Hell.