Botticelli’s Illustrations of Dante’s Paradiso: The Construction of Conjoined Vision

Abstract

THE NOTION OF READING with Sandro Botticelli is one that has intrigued scholars for some time. This essay explores the illustrations of Dante’s Paradiso as, first and foremost, readings of the poem, suggesting that Botticelli, as a particularly “sophisticated” reader (to use Vasari’s loaded term), engages Dante’s most challenging invitation to those who take up this canticle. This is the invitation to imagine the possibility of what I am calling “conjoined vision,” a mode of vision that Dante describes in the Paradiso as the privilege of the blessed. Botticelli’s engagement with this visionary challenge enables the viewers of his illustrations to reflect on and imaginatively expand their own modes of vision through a series of techniques that include the illustration of a plural gaze, the affective presentation