Rainbows, heavenly movers and human happiness. Arabic-Latin philosophy of nature and Dante, between iconography and digital humanities

The project has three maintargets. Dante’s usage of important texts of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) and Algazel (al-Ġazālī) in the Convivio has already been partially clarified. Previous studies show that Arabic psychological doctrines – mediated by Albert the Great – appear in Dante in a double fashion, both in their cosmological side – with reference to the moving intellects of the orbs and to their identification with the angels of the monotheistic tradition – and in their anthropological side – with a rich ethical and eschatological discussion on man’s intellectual happiness and the ways to reach it in statu viae and beyond. A systematic analysis of these pieces of evidence with the journey in the hereafter narrated in the Commedia, and with the doctrinal structure proper to the poem, would however still deserve a wider and more thorough philosophical treatment.
2) On another side, also Peripatetic meteorology has a place in the rich theoretical system of the «sacred poem», not only in the Purgatorio, where the terrestrial meteorological phenomena are meticolously listed , but also at the culmination of the journey to Paradise, since Dante describes the Trinity precisely by means of the physical-meteorological image of the rainbow. The celestial rainbow or the iridescent circle, also by mediation of the Bible, is by the way crucial in medieval representations of glorious Christ, both in the iconography of the Last Judgment and in the not less fascinating one of the so-called Dormitio Virginis. On the seemingly merely philosophical and physical theme many different arts – painting and mosaics, literature and poetry – appear thus inextricably interwoven, in a very fascinating cultural exchange which deserves further critical attention. 
3) Recent and well-documented studies have discussed the possible reconstruction of Dante’s (philosophical) library, with specific attention not only to the quotations of other authors found in Dante’s works, but also to the factual availability of manuscripts of those cited works in the libraries of the Italian medieval towns in which Dante lived and composed his oeuvre. The role of Florence in this field is obviously crucial. A specific analysis of the presence, in the Florentine manuscripts prior to Dante, of philosophical and scientific works translated from the Arabic into Latin, with particular reference to texts of natural philosophy, will be an integral part of the project. As such, it will be based on the digital catalogues already existent, but thanks to its specific focus it will also be able to improve and enrich them in both quantity and quality.