In an effort to find more interesting sources for this Dante blog, I simply looked up "Dante's Inferno" on Youtube. As I expected, most of the links directed me to the EA video game that has been talked and blogged about in the past. However, one of the links titled "Dante's Inferno 'Go To Hell' Super Bowl Commercial" sparked my interest.
The video is a 2012 Super Bowl ad for the video game around the time of its release. The ad is not very different from others (it's primarily a dramatic animation that shows Dante violently descending into Hell), except that it begins with the image of Beatrice. In this video, Beatrice is shown as a angelic and semi-sexualized woman dressed in white that is dragged down towards Hell by mystical smoke. While the notion that Beatrice is a figure to be "saved" from Hell is one of the many inaccuracies that this video game's platform is based upon, it was interesting to actually see an image of Beatrice.
Even though Beatrice was supposedly a real woman who Dante fell in love with, this image of her seemed inconsistent with my current notions of her based on my readings of Inferno so far. I believe that her beauty has been mentioned before, but certainly not in a sexualized or lustful way. In my eyes, Beatrice is spiritual beacon for Dante and less of a physical being.
Looking for more images of Beatrice, I found Wikipedia articles on the "Dante and Beatrice" painting by Henry Holiday (1884) and the painting "Beata Beatrix" Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1870). While these images represent Beatrice more realistically (as opposed to the gorgeous, blonde angel that was animated in the commercial), the focus is still on her as Dante's hopeful lover, a living woman, and not Beatrice as his spiritual guide. Both paintings represent her religious nature in some way; Holiday's painting depicts her as a woman dressed in white among two others dressed in red and blue, respectively, and Rossetti's painting shows her in a position that is almost prayer-like. However, both paintings clearly depict Beatrice as a living figure.
My reactions to the human representations of Beatrice are most likely due to the lack of information provided on Beatrice's life at this point in Inferno (up to Canto 12). But it is certainly interesting to think of this side of her and to be reminded that Beatrice was merely a woman who Dante was infatuated with, not a mythical or religious figure. I'm sure I will have a very different perspective on her once I work my way through Paradiso, but these are my observations for now.
Commerical:
http://youtu.be/9rbeAGdYk_0
"Dante and Beatrice":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_and_Beatrice_(painting)
"Beata Beatrix":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beata_Beatrix
I find it very interesting that Holiday, as an Englishman, chose to represent his women in Red, White, and Blue...almost a political statement, but evidence for that would be much more compelling if his dates were a century earlier. The colors are even more surprising when you consider that red, the color of lust and seduction, is pared with white (purity) and blue (peaceful calm). Exactly what Holiday is suggesting eludes me, but it's certainly an interesting puzzle to think about.
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