Collier House, "Dante" Window

To view our video on the Divine Comedy window, please click here.

Robert J. Collier, the publisher of Collier’s Weekly Magazine, became acquainted with Violet Oakley when she illustrated covers for his publication in the first decade of the twentieth century. He purchased her illustration “The Moonflower,” and displayed it in the 1905 Collier Collection exhibition at the American Art Galleries in New York. In 1910, Collier commissioned a stained glass window from Oakley for the library of the townhouse that he and his wife, Sarah Steward Van Alen, had recently purchased at 752 Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Oakley and Collier shared an appreciation for the Italian humanists Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio and initially considered them as subjects for the library stained glass window. Ultimately, they agreed on Dante’s Divine Comedy, an epic poem that had been illustrated by many famous artists, among them Sandro Botticelli, John Flaxman, William Blake, Gustave Doré, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Oakley designed the Divine Comedy window as a square divided into three vertical panels corresponding to the poem’s three books. Instead of giving equal importance to each section, she made the Paradiso the largest panel and centered it between the Inferno and the Purgatorio, which were half as wide. The Divine Comedy is modeled on the thirteenth-century medallion windows that were in style during Dante’s lifetime. Each window panel comprises a series of circular scenes illustrating the cantos. The Italian text of the cantos is inscribed on panels adjacent to the corresponding medallion. Oakley painted both images and inscriptions directly onto the glass. The window is predominantly blue, symbolizing the heavens, with the red-robed figure of Dante appearing in every medallion except the ninth circle of the Inferno. She further embellished the window’s elaborate design with light-catching glass “jewels” set in the borders.

Oakley narrated the Divine Comedy in the visual directions of Dante’s journey: his descent into the Inferno is read from top to bottom, the ascent of Mount Purgatory is read from bottom to top, and the flight through the heavenly spheres of the Paradiso soars upward to the tenth heaven. The largest scene in the window, the White Rose of the Tenth Heaven is a vision Eve seated at the feet of the enthroned Virgin Mary. Deeply moved by Dante’s image of the first woman’s redemption, Oakley made several studies for a fountain on the theme of Eve at the Feet of Mary as well as a mural in the Great Women of the Bible series at First Presbyterian Church in Germantown in the 1940s.

Oakley’s red chalk preparatory drawings for the Divine Comedy window were published in The Century Illustrated Magazine in December 1912. When the drawings were exhibited at the Architectural League of New York in 1914, art critic Royal Cortissoz wrote in the New York Tribune that “these windows, based on episodes of Dante and showing here and there, by the way, the influence of Botticelli’s famous drawings, make it plain that the artist has found her golden opportunity and successfully risen to it.”

The Divine Comedy window was Oakley’s most highly acclaimed work in stained glass. Collier lent the window to the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where it received a gold medal. After Collier’s death in 1918, his New York townhouse was sold. His widow removed the window and gave it to the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See at 1811 Biltmore Street NW in Washington, DC. After that building was razed in 1939, the window was moved to its current location in the stairwell of the Residence of the Apostolic Nuncio at 3339 Massachusetts Avenue NW.