| One of 115 illuminations in this manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy by two artists working in Siena, the illustrations to the last of the three parts, the 'Paradiso', by Giovanni di Paolo in the mid 1440's, of which four feature Bernard. The illuminations were all placed in the lower half of the folio, were mostly oblong of a uniform height of approximately 9 cm and of varying width. The manuscript was either commissioned by Alfonso V of Aragon, king of Naples, or designed for presentation to him. In the first of the four illuminations, illustrating Canto XXXI, Bernard, Dante's sponsor in the last pages of the poem, shows Dante, kneeling just outside the garden, the Virgin in glory seated in profile holding the Child and surrounded by five angels in the centre of the flower-filled garden, backed by a curved wooden fence. Although Beatrice relinquishes her role as Dante's mentor, she stilll reappears in three of the four miniatures, in this one floating outside the garden with her right hand on Dante and her left on one of the angels. Bernard has a 'tuft'.(See also MA63-5).
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