An early Trecento maritime workscape in Dante’s Commedia: the Venetian shipyard (“l’arzanà de’ Viniziani”, Inf. XXI 7-21)

In just a few lines, the twenty-first canto of Dante’s Inferno offers a remarkably clear and detailed glimpse of the Venice Arsenal’s winter shipyard, engaged in the maintenance and construction of vessels during the seasonal suspension of navigation and organized according to a precise functional division of labor. This article examines the passage not only from a literary perspective, but primarily as a significant piece of evidence for a precisely identifiable medieval workscape, one that can be situated between approximately 1306 and 1314 and that Dante depicts with a striking commitment to empirical accuracy. Beginning with the literary model underlying the scene, Virgil’s description of the founding of Carthage (Aen. I, 423–429), which Dante had already reworked in De vulgari eloquentia (I, vii, 6) in his account of the construction of the Tower of Babel, the article highlights the poet’s ability to grasp and faithfully represent the dynamics of an organized system of labor. Dante captures the distinctive features of the Venetian shipyard, both in its production processes and in its specialized technical vocabulary. His portrayal demonstrates not only an informed understanding of the Arsenal’s operation, but also an awareness of its civic significance, a significance that endures as one of the defining symbols of Venetian identity even today.