Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism

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In the anonymous chivalric novel Curial and Guelfa (XVth century), the Envy, one of the seven capital sins of the Medieval Septenary, offers a literary background (but also a philosophical-moral one) and is the foundation of both the plot teatralization and the characters poetic construction. As a recurrent theme in Medieval Philosophy, Theology and Homiletics, therefore, the Envy can also be considered as the novel’s leitmotiv. The purpose of this work is to present some initial remarks concerning this theme in Curial and Guelfa, and especially, relate it to some artistic representations of Envy in the period, such as, for example, the Arena Chapel Fresco (1308) of Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266-1337), The Last Judgement (c. 1393), of Taddeo di Bartolo (c. 1362-1422), besides, naturally, the famous iconographic representation of the theme by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516): The Seven Capital Sins (c. 1485). To this purpose, our analysis will be methodologically based on the literary narrative method of Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), as exposed in his classic The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919).