“Dante’s painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness as of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is every way noble, and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what qualities in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too: della bella persona, che mi fu tolta ; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these alti guai . And the racking winds, in that aer bruno , whirl them away again, to wail forever!⁠—Strange to think: Dante was the friend of this poor Francesca’s father; Francesca herself may have sat upon the Poet’s knee, as a bright, innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigor of law: it is so Nature is made; it is so Dante discerned that she was made.”

Later commentators assert that Dante’s friend Guido was not the father of Francesca, but her nephew.