Reconstruction of Dante's face ....

[j d worthington]

A reconstruction of the face of Dante Alighieri has proved rather surprising to some:

Dante gets posthumous nose job - 700 years on - Yahoo! News

The story is from Reuters, is by Philip Pullella, is datelined Thurs., Jan. 11, 2007, and is titled "Dante gets posthumous nose job - 700 years on" (a hideous title, but what can you say...)

ROME (Reuters) - Italian scientists have made a reconstruction of the face of the poet Dante some 700 years after he died and have found some surprises, particularly about the supposed shape of his famous aquiline nose.

"It was a surprise for me too," said Professor Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist at the University of Bologna's campus in Ravenna, the Adriatic city where Dante is buried.

Gruppioni told Reuters in a telephone interview that the multi-disciplinary project discovered that Dante probably did have a hooked nose but it was pudgy rather than pointy and crooked rather than straight, almost as if he had been punched.

"We all had our ideas of what Dante looked like. But if this is right, it shows his face was different," he said. "He looks more like a common man, a man on the street."

Numerous "death masks" purported to be of Dante exist but historians believe they likely were sculpted after his death.

"No human face could stand having 30 death masks made from it," Gruppioni said.

The team of scientists based their work on calculations made on Dante's skull made by Professor Fabio Frassetto in 1921, the only time it has been removed from its crypt. Frassetto took precise measurements and secretly made a plaster model.