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Con questo saggio cerco di mostrare come nell’ambiente culturale padovano di inizio ’300 la riflessione attorno alla funzione delle immagini e delle personificazioni in poesia – che Dante avrebbe considerato prima all’altezza della Vita Nova e quindi nei canti purgatoriali del ‘visibile parlare’ – ebbe a radicarsi sulla diffusione in quell’ambiente dei testi di Alain de Lille (Anticlaudianus, De planctu Naturae). Grazie a quel primo impulso, i registri retorici potenziati dall’apporto delle immagini figurate si liberarono dei vecchi schemi allegorici per approdare a un nuovo sistemi di segni che fece delle antiche figurae gli specchi di valori metafisici.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the problem of meta-poetic themes in the Divine Comedy, focusing in particular on the relationship between God's art and Dante's art in the context of the impression caused by the sight of the rock reliefs in the cornice of the proud in the Purgatorio, where the poet, presenting and imitating the art of God, in fact shows the mastery of his own art. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the examples of humility and pride carved on the walls and the rock path - the perfect work of God-the Artist, vibrant with life and called by Dante visibile parlare - are, on the one hand, a mise en abyme of its macroscopic version, which is the Universe created by him, and, on the other hand, a mise en abyme of the universe narrated with the simile perfection by Dante. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Dante the pilgrim admires the sculpted images on Purgatory's terrace of pride, the figures seem to talk, sing, and move for him. Through an examination of the Commedia's presentation of the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary (Purgatorio 10.34-45), and of the two additional Annunciation scenes that follow (Paradiso 23.70-111, Paradiso 32.85-114), this essay argues that the sensory experience the pilgrim has in Purgatory with the "visibile parlare" mimics medieval reading practices and prepares the reader to understand how memory and meditation work together in the context of figurative art to lead the pilgrim to divine contemplation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]