ALIGHIERI Dante: COMENTO DI CHRISTOPHORO LANDINO FIORENTINO SOPRA LA COMEDIA DI DANTHE ALIGHIERI, Venice 1491

Description

COMENTO DI CHRISTOPHORO LANDINO FIORENTINO SOPRA LA COMEDIA DI DANTHE ALIGHIERI POETA FIORENTINO

Venezia (al colophon), impressi in Venesia: per Bernardino Benali & Matthio da Parma ADI III Marzo, 1491

In-folio (mm 293×198). Leaves CCLXXXXI, [1]. Text in Roman characters (R 108) on 61 lines.  With 4 full-page woodcut illustrations and 97 vignettes in the text. Specimen without the 10 initial leaves containing the Life of Dante. Small marginal stains and light repairs to a few pages. Bound in full vellum over pasteboards with manuscript title at the back (ca. end of XVII C.). A portrait of Dante executed in pencil and watercolor is attached to first endpaper.

Comments:

The first fully figurative edition of Dante’s Commedia: a completely new series of woodcuts accompanies the three Cantiche and also illustrates Paradise for the first time. The iconographic apparatus will be used, imitated and adapted, also with modifications, in the successive editions of the Commedia, until 1544 when Marcolini radically innovates the representation of Dante’s text. The edition is considered a masterpiece of the Venetian illustrated book of the Renaissance.