Dante Alighieri, painted by Giotto in the chapel of the Bargello palace in Florence. This oldest portrait of Dante was painted during his lifetime before his exile from his native city.

A portrait of Dante, from a fresco in Palazzo dei Giudici, Florence.

Dante Alighieri (Italian: [duˈrante deʎʎ aliˈɡjɛːri]), known simply as Dante (Italian: [ˈdante], UK: /ˈdæni/, US: /ˈdɑːneɪ/; c. 1265 – September 14, 1321), was a major Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages/Early Renaissance. His central work, the Commedia (Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. In Italian he is known as il Sommo Poeta (the Supreme Poet). Dante and the Divine Comedy have been a source of inspiration for artists for almost seven centuries. Dante, alongside Petrarch and Boccaccio, is known as one of "the three fountains", and is often referred to as "the Father of the Italian language". The first biography written on him was by his contemporary Giovanni Villani. The most famous section in The Divine Comedy is the first third of it, the first 34 cantos of the poem, called Inferno, which features Dante's vision of Hell.