Beatrice "Bice" di Folco Portinari was an Italian woman who has been commonly identified as the principal inspiration for Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova, and is also identified with the Beatrice who act
Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (c. 1870)
Beatrice appears to Virgil at the start of Inferno, in an illustration by Gustave Doré.
Dante and Beatrice, by Henry Holiday (1883). Dante looks longingly at Beatrice (in center) passing by with friend Lady Vanna (red) along the Arno River
La Vita Nuova or Vita Nova is a text by Dante Alighieri published in 1294. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and verse.
Beatrice Portinari
…Portinari (Italian: ; 1265 – 8 or 19 June 1290) was an Italian woman who has been commonly identified as the principal inspiration for Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova, and is also identified with the Beatrice who acts as his guide in the last book of his narrative poem the Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia), Paradiso…
Frontispiece of the English version (The New Life, D. G. Rossetti, 1899)
Henry Holiday's 1883 Dante and Beatrice is inspired by La Vita Nuova (Beatrice is in yellow)