Ballads and sonnets

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was born in Florence and, as a boy of nine, saw Beatrice Portinari, the woman who would inspire his poetry for the rest of his life, as he tells in La Vita Nuova. He became a poet, a soldier and a politician, and in 1302 was exiled by his political enemies under threat of death.

He never returned to Florence. In exile, moving between the courts of northern Italy, he wrote The Divine Comedy, placing friends and enemies in Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. He died in Ravenna, where he is buried, and the city of Florence still keeps an empty tomb for him.