Sandro Botticelli’s Visual Language in Illustrations of The Divine Comedy

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This paper seeks to offer a close reading of Botticelli’s illustrations for The Divine Comedy using Neil Cohn and Thierry Groensteen’s tools of comics analysis. Botticelli uses a visual language, I argue, which is distinct from that of modern comics (what Neil Cohn calls American Visual Language), most notably in its flexible reading paths. Unlike modern comics creators, who use panel ordering as a primary means to convey sequence, Botticelli is not tethered to a specific horizontal reading direction; the vertical book positioning facilitates a narrative path which is not dependent upon a fixed start and end point to a given page but tracks a passage down the page. In the absence of a standard reading path, Botticelli uses a rising perspective and a distinctive color palette for recurring icons to guide his readers through a narrative.