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Updated: May 28, 2025
It is recorded that in the middle of the seventeenth century the Franciscans rebuilt and repaired the so-called chapel of Braccioforte at S. Francesco, which till then had been joined by a portico to the tomb of Dante. In 1658 this portico among other alterations was removed, and the exterior of the tomb itself was reconstructed with an entrance into the Piazza, as we see it.
The fourth room, however, is devoted to the beautiful tomb of Guidarello Guidarelli, the very glorious work of Tullio Lombardi. Of old this exquisite tomb stood in the Cappella Braccioforte at S. Francesco. Guidarello of Ravenna was killed in battle at Imola in 1501, and Tullio Lombardi, the son of Pietro, was employed to make his tomb.
It is curious that even as the last cantos of the Divine Comedy were discovered by means of a dream, so a dream went before the discovery of the bones of Dante. "The sacristan of the Franciscan confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte."
In June 1677 Fra Antonio visited the bones in their hiding place and verified them. In October of the same year they were built into the new wall where the old entrance to the Braccioforte chapel had been; to be discovered by chance in 1865.
This, however, was the sixth centenary of Dante's birth and the sarcophagus was again to be opened to "verify the remains." The workmen were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed.
There is the monument, now in the museum at Ravenna, by a sculptor whose name, were it known, would surely be among the greatest, of the condottiere, Braccioforte: the body prone in its heavy case of armour, not yet laid out in state, but such as he may have been found in the evening, when the battle was over, under a tree where they had carried him to die while they themselves went back to fight; the head has fallen back, side-ways, weighed down by the helmet, which has not even been unbuckled, only the face, the clear-cut, austere features, visible beneath the withdrawn vizor; the eyes have not been closed; and there are few things more exquisite and solemn at once in all sculpture, than the indication of those no longer seeing eyes, of that broken glance, beneath the half-closed lids.
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