Italian Literary History in a Single Image: Vasari’s ‘Six Tuscan Poets’

“Six Tuscan Poets,” circa 1544, by Giorgio Vasari. (L–R) Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri, and Guido Cavalcanti. Institute of Art Minneapolis Institute of Art. Public Domain

What would great poets, philosophers, and artists of different centuries say to one another if they could meet? How would Aristotle reply to Kant? What would Bach tell Mozart? What words of wisdom would Homer proffer to Virgil?

Those questions remain forever in the realm of speculation. Such a rendezvous has never taken place, unless you count the meeting of minds that occurs when a great thinker reads the works of another, as happened with Virgil, who in many ways modeled his work on Homer.

A Thought Experiment Made Visible

But in the world of art, we can gain a glimpse of what such a meeting would look like. A painting from the mid-1500s by Giorgio Vasari called “Six Tuscan Poets” depicts a parlay of poets, some of whom could never have met in real life, gathered around a table with books and astronomical paraphernalia.