Dante Alighieri with Florence and the Realms of the Divine Comedy (Hell, Purgatory, Paradise)

Domenico di Michelino's painting of Dante with Florence and the three realms of the Divine Comedy was created in 1465 for Florence Cathedral, where it still hangs today. Commissioned to commemorate the bicentennial of Dante's birth, it shows the poet holding his great work open while Florence's cathedral dome and the mountains of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise surround him — a civic monument that establishes Dante as Florence's greatest literary son.

The painting combines the diagrammatic clarity needed to illustrate Dante's cosmological vision with the naturalistic cityscape of contemporary Florence, centered on Brunelleschi's recently completed dome.