Dante Alighieri - Detroit, MI - Dead Poets' Society Memorials on Waymarking.com

This marble bust of Dante Alighieri is located at the intersections of Central Avenue and Vista Drive on Belle Isle, which is an island in the middle of the Detroit River. The monument is approaching 100 years old as it has been here since 1927. It is listed on the Smithsonian Art Inventories Catalog which states:"This bust was the second commissioned the Italian community in Detroit, the first was created by Carlo Rivalta, but due to a dissagreement between the monument committee and the general committee, the bust was rejected by the library where the bust was to be installed. This second bust by Romanelli was rejected by the library because it was larger than agreed upon. It was stored for many years before the City Planning Commission accepted the work in Oct. 1925. A base was ordered from Italy, but due to lack of funds the work was not installed until July 1927."

There is a plaque on the marble base that reads
Dante Alighieri
1265-1321
The father of Italian literature
Sculptor, Raffaello Romanelli 1856-1928
Erected by the Italian community of Detroit, 1927
Restored by the friends of Belle Isle, 1998
In cooperation with the Detroit Recreation Department
Restored by the Dante Alighieri Society of Michigan, 2013

Dante was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa... is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.

Dante is known for establishing the use of the vernacular in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, which was accessible only to the most educated readers. HisDe vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular) was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and Divine Comedy helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later follow. -Dante Alighieri

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