Viso, volto, faccia e sembiante in Dante

Verses 22-45 of canto XXVIII of Dante’s Inferno are problematic for translations into languages that are prevalent in predominantly Islamic countries. These verses, in fact, describe the punishment that Dante imagined for Muhammad and Ali. The severity of their punishment is expressed, in particular, through the figure of the face cleaved in two halves, a counterpoint for those who, according to Dante, committed the sin of dividing Christianity. The face is omnipresent in Dante’s masterpiece. The article sum- marizes its semantics in reference also to the various terms used by Dante to designate different aspects of the face (“faccia”, “viso”, “volto”, “sembiante”); it distills the salient bibliography on the subject and proposes that the itinerary of the viator through the three dimensions of damnation, purgation, and bliss is also and above all an itinerary made of faces that the viator meets, his face also transfiguring itself gradually along the path of holiness.