ABSTRACT
The figure of Dante Alighieri has become a cultural icon and symbol of an ideal linguistic unity which anticipated national unification. Through his active role in the visual narrative the artists represent Dante the pilgrim as an 'Everyman', showing his allegorical role, his role representing mankind itself as 'the personification of Christian endeavor, after whom the reader should mold himself in mind and heart'. The illustrators were certainly aware of Dante as a poet, and this must have been due in part to his own assertion of this role, reinforced by commentators. As is often the case in Commedia illustration, the influence of traditional visual models played a large part in the artists' presentation of Dante as poet. The illustrators depict the allegory of sleep by showing Dante literally sleeping at the start of the Inferno. The image of the dreaming figure and his imaginative creation was present in the corpus of material available to the Commedia illustrators for inspiration.
