Botticelli’s ninety wonderful illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy represent (among other things) one of the greatest missed opportunities in the annals of British art collecting. Originally created in Florence in the 1490s and subsequently given by their first owner, a member of the Medici family, to the King of France, these masterpieces of Renaissance draughtsmanship had by the mid-nineteenth century found their way into the possession of the Dukes of Hamilton. Then, in 1882, they were put up for sale. Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia, tried to persuade the Prime Minister William Gladstone that the government should purchase them for the British nation. Victoria herself added her weight to the appeal. But despite his enthusiasm for Dante’s poetry, Gladstone declined to get involved and so the German government bought them instead. They have not been seen in Britain since – until yesterday, that is, when they were placed on temporary exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. To mark the event (and underline Gladstone’s regrettable shortsightedness) this week’s picture is one the most evocative of all Botticelli’s Dante drawings.

It illustrates Canto XXXI of the Inferno. At this point in The Divine Comedy Dante and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, have almost completed their descent through the nine circles of hell. As they make their way across a barren and rocky landscape, Dante suddenly hears the blast of a horn louder than thunder and makes out some towering shapes in the distance. On approaching them he realises with dismay that they are in fact a group of giants standing in chains up to their waists in a great stone well. The sight puts him in mind of the fortified Tuscan hilltop town of Montereggione (a town that still stands today, together with its fourteen...

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