Putti e fiamme aggettivi dell’angelo. O della libertà della forma nella regola del ruolo dell’ornamento, nell’arte fiorentina del Quattrocento

The contribution traces the parallelism of meaning between the form of the flame and the form of the spiritello in relation to the figure of the angel in 15th-century in Florence. The correspondence of meaning, based on iconological criteria, turns into an investigation of a formal character to see the alternation of the motif of the flame and that of the spiritello in works of art, finding as a point of intersection and departure for the analysis Sandro Botticelli’s illustration for Canto XXX of Dante’s Commedia. Following the path of the introduction of the figure of the spiritello and the use of the flame in the Florentine context of the time, it is defined how their similarity is first and foremost due to their ornamental use. Indeed, it is precisely in the ornament that the permutation of form between flame and putto is possible, and vice versa, in the permanence of their symbolic meaning. The role of every ornament is to be adjective to its object; flame and putto are in this sense adjectives of the angel.