Proserpina

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In Canto XXVIII of the Purgatorio Dante inserts the name of Proserpina in a simile: the woman who gathers flowers in the grove of the earthly Paradise is compared to Proserpina "in the time when she lost her mother, and she lost the spring." The critical note on the verse clarifies that Dante explicitly cites his source, Ovid's Metamorphoses (V 385 ff.), where Proserpina is the young daughter of Ceres who, while in a shadowy wood rich in waters and flowers, is abducted by the king of the underworld and thus loses the flowers she has gathered. The same commentary indicates that the gesture of Dante's woman ("flower from flower") follows that of Ovid's Proserpina ("aut violas aut candida lilia carpit"). The notes also highlight the symbolic value of the myth: Proserpina figured the loss of innocence and the happiness of youth, which for Christians could recall the loss of the earthly paradise, and precisely this parallel — together with the connection to the figure of Leah — suggests the meaning of the woman in the canto (later identified as Matelda).