Fresco confirms Dante's nose not so big

VERONA, Italy, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- A fresco found in Florence, Italy, shows the poet Dante's nose wasn't too big, and it wasn't aquiline either.

The fresco, Ansa reports, was long neglected, but it conforms to results of a reconstruction created by computer experts in Bologna.

Italy's greatest poet was thought unattractive, with a hooked nose. Critics theorize that's the reason a woman named Beatrice Portinari -- who lives "forever" in the poet's work -- rejected him, the news service said.

The reconstruction and the fresco show Dante with a pastier, less forbidding face and a smaller nose than thought.

Expert Daniela Dini said the fresco -- found at the Judges and Notaries' Guild in Verona -- was "more like a portrait done by someone who'd actually seen him."