700th Anniversary of the Death of Dante

An artistically designed souvenir sheet with two stamps commemorates the 700th anniversary of the death of the Italian writer Dante Alighieri. Designer Thomas Giger created pen and ink drawings for the issue, the characteristics of which are particularly accentuated in the steel engraving. In addition to the special stamps "Portrait of Dante Alighieri" (face value: CHF 3.70) and "Writing Hand with Quill" (face value: CHF 4.00), the image on the souvenir sheet is based on a scene from Dante's main work Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy).

Little is known about the childhood and adolescence of the greatest Italian writer of the Middle Ages. It is considered certain that he was born around 1265 in Florence and received education and encouragement at a young age. From the age of thirty, he held various political offices. However, in the struggle for the independence of Florence against the attempts of Pope Boniface VIII to intervene, he became entangled in an unsuccessful opposition and was subsequently condemned to perpetual exile from Florence and shortly afterwards sentenced to death. From 1303 he led a vagrant life, which took him to Ravenna in the years preceding his death in 1321.