again
a mystery, but it has been agreed to consider her in real life a
daughter of Folco Portinari, a wealthy Florentine and the founder of
the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, one of whose descendants commissioned
Hugo van der Goes to paint the great triptych in the Uffizi. Folco's
tomb is in S. Egidio, the hospital church, while in the passage to
the cloisters is a stone figure of Monna Tessa (of whom we are about
to see a coloured bust in the Bargello), who was not only Beatrice's
nurse (if Beatrice were truly of the Portinari) but the instigator,
it is said, of Folco's deed of charity.

Of Dante's rapt adoration of his lady, the "Vita Nuova"
tells. According to that strangest monument of devotion it was not
until another nine years had passed that he had speech of her; and
then Beatrice, meeting him in the street, saluted him as she passed
him with such ineffable courtesy and grace that he was lifted into a
seventh heaven of devotion and set upon the writing of his book. The
two seem to have had no closer intercourse: Beatrice shone distantly
like a star and her lover worshipped her with increasing loyalty
and fervour, overlaying the idea of her, as one might say, with gold
and radiance, very much as we shall see Fra Angelico adding glory to
the Madonna and Saints in his pictures, and with a similar intensity
of ecstasy. Then one day Beatrice married, and not long afterwards,
being always very fragile, she died, at the age of twenty-three. The
fact that she was no longer on earth hardly affected her poet,
whose worship of her had always so little of a physical character;
and she continued to dominate his thoughts.

In 1293, however, Dante married, one Gemma Donati of the powerful
Guelph family of that name, of which Corso Donati was the turbulent
head; and by her he had many children. For Gemma, however, he seems
to have had no affection; and when in 1301 he left Florence, never to
return, he left his wife for ever too. In 1289 Dante had been present
at the battle of Campaldino, fighting with the Guelphs against the
Ghibellines, and on settling down in Florence and taking to politics it
was as a Guelph, or rather as one of that branch of the Guelph party
which had become White--the Bianchi--as opposed to the other party
which was Black--the Neri. The feuds between these divisions took the
place of those between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, since Florence
was never happy without internal strife, and it cannot have added