Scientists Reconstruct Dante Alighieri's Dace for the First Time in Over 700 years

Computer graphics expert Cicero Morais, along with a team of scientists and artists, reconstructed the face of the prominent Italian poet of the Renaissance era, Dante Alighieri, reports The Telegraph.

The precise appearance of Dante remained a mystery for over 700 years, as all depictions of the writer were created after his death. The three-dimensional rendering of Dante's face shows that he had a less pronounced chin and a nose with eagle-like features, but without the sharpness depicted in previous images.

Morais utilized data from a 1921 study of Dante's skull and supplemented it with information from a scientific article published in 2007. Together with the team from the Federal University of Uberlândia in Brazil, he employed a process known as facial approximation. This method relies on statistical data obtained from tomography and ultrasound analysis and is combined with anatomical deformation.

Anatomical deformation involves digitally manipulating a living model's face until it matches the corresponding skull, thus producing a likeness of the poet during his lifetime. The research also revealed that Dante's skull was larger than that of the average person of his time.

Previously, the most well-known image of Dante was a portrait created by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli in 1495, depicting the poet with a long nose and a sharp chin. Similar depictions were found in one of the frescoes of the Florentine Cathedral.

Most traditional images of the poet are based on information from Dante's biography, compiled by the writer Boccaccio, where he is described as being of "average height, somewhat stooped, with an elongated face, an eagle-like nose, and large eyes." "However, Boccaccio did not personally know Dante and gathered information from people close to the poet who lived with him," added Cicero Morais.

Dante Alighieri is considered a prominent Italian poet of the Renaissance era, a writer, and a politician, often referred to as the "father of Italian literature." He was the first to start writing literary works in Italian rather than Latin. His major work is the poem "Divine Comedy," considered a masterpiece of world literature.