DANTE AND DOCTRINAL DEBATES: NARDO DI CIONE’S INFERNO FRESCO IN THE SANTA MARIA NOVELLA CHURCH

My thesis argues that Nardo di Cione’s 1354-57 Inferno fresco, located on the North Wall of the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, visualized doctrinal debates that persisted throughout the late Medieval Period and beyond. Though the fresco’s adherence to the poet Dante’s Inferno has been well studied, the significant iconographical deviations from the literary text have received little scrutiny. It is argued here, with a consideration of pertinent Patristic and Thomistic texts, that the deviations made by Nardo reflect ongoing theological debates about the afterlife that were current in Florence in the period. In particular, it is suggested that the treatment of limbo, which can be understood to function simultaneously as a representation of purgatory, evokes questions of its very existence because of the ambiguous nature of the doctrine surrounding both locations. It is concluded that the fresco displays an engagement with doctrinal debates on the afterlife that would eventually reach a crisis point more than two centuries later during the Protestant Reformation.