Pia dei Tolomei Conducted in Maremma

With "Pia dei Tolomei conducted in Maremma", the Venetian Pompeo Marino Molmenti (1819-1894) tackles for the first time a "historical" subject, taken from the Divine Comedy, which became the subject of re-discoveries and re-readings during the 19th century. Pia dei Tolomei, a Sienese noblewoman mentioned in Canto V of Dante's Purgatory, becomes the protagonist of the poem by Bartolomeo Sestini, a Pistoiese patriot, in 1822, which tells the tragic story of the woman unjustly accused of treason and locked up by her spouse in a tower because of jealousy. Molmenti depicts the moment in which the woman, unaware of her destiny, is led towards the sinister Castello della Pietra, her prison and final resting place, across a desolate lagoon landscape by her husband, Nello dei Pannocchieschi, captured with a gloomy face and an almost bronzed horse.