Postage Stamp - Vatican City - 1965

Title

Postage Stamp - Vatican City - 1965

Type

Postage Stamp

Coverage

Vatican City

Date Issued

1965-05-18

Date Valid

1965-05-18-1966-06-30

Description

This set of four stamps was issued by Vatican City to commemorate the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth. The 10-lire stamp is based on the portrait of Dante in Raphael's fresco Disputation of the Holy Sacrament in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. The other three stamps are based on Sandro Botticelli's illustrations to the Divina commedia found in a manuscript volume in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin known as MS Hamilton 201 and a manuscript in the Vatican Library known as Cod. Reg. Lat. 1896. The illustrations are as follows: Dante encounters a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf (L. 40; Inferno 1; Cod. Reg. Lat. 1896), Dante and Virgil at the foot of Mount Purgatory (L. 70; Purgatorio 3; MS Hamilton 201), and Dante and Beatrice in the heaven of the moon (L. 200; Paradiso 3; MS Hamilton 201). All of the stamps were designed by Casimira Dabrowska and each stamp was engraved by a different person: A. Quieti (L. 10), G. Denza (L. 40), M. Soccorsi (L. 70), and E. V. de Cresci (L. 200).
Denomination: 10 lire (10 VAL); 40 lire (40 VAL); 70 lire (70 VAL); 200 lire (200 VAL)
Perforation: 13 ½ × 14 (comb)
Printer: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Officina Carte Valori (Rome, Italy)
Printing process: Photogravure
Print run: 3,156,600 sets

Extent

40 × 30 mm

Bibliographic Citation

Michel no. 477 (L. 10)
Michel no. 478 (L. 40)
Michel no. 479 (L. 70)
Michel no. 480 (L. 200)
Sassone no. 410 (L. 10)
Sassone no. 411 (L. 40)
Sassone no. 412 (L. 70)
Sassone no. 413 (L. 200)
Scott no. 410 (L. 10)
Scott no. 411 (L. 40)
Scott no. 412 (L. 70)
Scott no. 413 (L. 200)
Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000), p. 40–41, 140–141, and 222–223.
Richard Thayer Holbrook, Portraits of Dante from Giotto to Raffael: A Critical Study with a Concise Iconography (London: Philip Lee Warner, publisher to the Medici Society Ltd.; Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911), p. 187–203.
H. A. Phinney, "Dante," Vatican Notes 15, no. 6 (May–June 1967): 1, 3–5.

Contributor

Raphael
Sandro Botticelli
Casimira Dabrowska
A. Quieti
G. Denza
M. Soccorsi
E. V. de Cresci
Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Officina Carte Valori (Rome, Italy)

Language

Italian
Latin