Mediating Christ in <i>Paradiso</i> and in MS Vat.lat.4776

In Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat.lat.4776 (c. 1390–1400), line drawings, of particularly high-quality draughtsmanship, accompany Paradiso i–xi. Although Christ does not in any straightforward sense participate the narrative i–xi, majority drawings contain a small head and neck enclosed nimbus, strongly reminiscent devotional iconography Veronica or Holy Face. The images explore one central questions Commedia: how divine is present in, mediated by, human encounters. I investigate how, different ways, both Dante’s text (here focusing on ‘in’ neologisms ix xiv), understood as reality that allows humans to share capacity for relatedness bound by normal spatiotemporal limits.