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Behind every great painting, symphony, piece of literature, or other artwork there hides a powerful emotion that fuels the artist from start to completion. When we look at a painting, we are not just seeing colored pigment suspended in oil on a stretched canvas, w ....

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.... his life: Beatrice. Dante first saw Beatrice when he was only 9 years old (Dinsmore 69). She became his inspiration for almost every major work he created and he viewed her as his savior, first temporally and later spiritually (Fergusson 165, Inf. II, 109-114). His La Vita Nuova is a collection of poems and prose commentary inspired by Beatrice and collected after her death in 1290. Dante's love, however, was unrequited, as he himself says in a conversation with a lady recounted in La Vita Nuova: "What purpose have you in loving this lady, when you cannot bear her presence? Tell us about it, because surely the purpose of such love must be very stran ....