“Oro ed argento fino, cocco e biacca, Indico legno lucido e sereno, Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca“ are the substances Dante cites in Purgatorio, vii, 73–75, as being surpassed in color by the flowers and grass of the Valley of the Princes. The criticism on verse seventy-four divides into two schools according to the punctuation assigned to the passage by commentators. One section, and perhaps the greater, holds that Dante meant the whole line to refer to one substance, some word from India; the other, putting a comma after the first word, has it that the poet had two colors in mind when he wrote the words: the color of indigo and that of some “wood shining and clear,” which latter is however rather dull and obscure of interpretation. Among the substances guessed at by the commentators there is none that fits well the sense of the passage, neither ebony nor “quercia marcia” having colors appropriate to a description of bright flowers. Philalethes joined those who hold that “indico” should be interpreted as meaning indigo rather than Indian, feeling a need of blue among the flower colors. In the meadows of Saxony corn flower, speedwell, lungwort and borage are common on every hand and make generous gift of pure blue to the kaleidoscope of nature; but did Dante have any such association with the color? What place does blue hold in the Divina Commedia? It is surprising to find that there are only five references in the whole poem that surely can be interpreted “blue.” In the Inferno we have two of the purses worn by the usurers described with azure in the blazon (Inf., xvii, 59 and 64). In Purgatory the noonday light turns the heavenly blue to white (Purg., xxvi, 6) and in two passages the heavens have the color of saphire (Purg., i, 13, and Par., xxiii, 101). In one passage we cannot be quite sure that “smalto” may not mean blue—the doubt hinging on an ambiguity of reference to the earthly or the heavenly paradise; the frequent use Dante makes of the word to describe greensward is rather a strong argument for the former interpretation. This scarcity of blue in the coloring of the Divina Commedia is the more striking when we remember how rich in cobalt, ultramarine, and smalt were the illuminations and frescoes that made up the art of Dante's contemporaries, and how strong the visualistic power of the artist was in Dante.