750th Birthday of Dante Alighieri

Portrait of Dante Alighieri, based on a fresco by Sandro Botticelli; the inscription "DANTE", the country name "SAN MARINO", the dates "1265" and "2015", the initials of designer Annalisa Masini and the "R" mintmark.

Dante Alighieri was born around 1265 in Florence and is regarded as the founder of the modern Italian literary language. His major work, the Divine Comedy, was written in the last years of his life during exile, after he was banished from Florence in 1302. The work is divided into Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso and describes a journey through the three realms of the afterlife. It is significant not only as a religious didactic poem but also as a document in the history of language: Dante wrote in Tuscan rather than Latin, laying the foundation for what would become standard Italian. His influence on literature, philosophy and the visual arts continues to this day.

San Marino, a microstate located in the heart of the Apennine peninsula, shares a close cultural and historical bond with Italy. Dante is not a distant symbol in the region but a living point of reference: the traditions of the medieval city-states in which he lived and worked shaped the political and cultural life of the whole peninsula, San Marino included. Numerous Renaissance artists - including Sandro Botticelli, who depicted Dante repeatedly in his works - left portraits that still serve today as the iconographic basis for depicting the poet. For Dante Alighieri's 750th birthday, San Marino issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2015 that draws on one such portrait.