Canto XV/1 This is the third use of the 'Study' motif (which will appear also in Canto XXXIII/1). Dante's links with two important literary precursors are asserted, firstly by Virgil's study in II/1 and here by the study of his teacher Brunetto Latini whom we meet in this Canto. The naif Tesoretto (which Brunetto begs Dante and the world to remember him by), a simple literary example of the Art of Memory, has many elements that must have impressed the young writer. The poem starts in fact with its protagonist similarly lost in a wood, referred to as una selva mesta: it is this strong pre-echo that I quote in the open book within the picture. Of the original elements of the 'Study' motif I have here retained, apart from the framework itself, the pen and ink of authorship, the cypress with its twin function of phallic ikon and memento mori (though now it overlooks no voluptuous landscape of feminine undulations but a parched desert under a scorching sky), and the three books, one of which still retains the ROMA of its title. The (faintly punning) bentwood chair which seems to be dissolving represents a trickster element in Ser Brunetto, who in his work had hypocritically condemned sodomy, the very sin we now see him punished for. Virgil plays an ambiguous role in this Canto. He is uncharacteristically silent and when he does venture a comment he is virtually ignored by the customarily deferential Dante. Perhaps this is Dante's muted way of acknowledging Virgil's own homosexuality. Thus Virgil appears on the wall of Ser Brunetto's study as a double mentor, coarsely reproduced to indicate the imprecise knowledge of Classical literature amongst Brunetto Latini's generation and set in a frame whose shape echoes the lawn of A Folly for Wisdom (cf. Canto IV/1) which appears again in the last illustration of this Canto. The decor of the room is completed, as if by a wallpaper, with the repeated lily, to give it both a more 'precious' atmosphere and to reinforce the Florentine connection. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.