<p style='text-align: justify;'>This is the second edition of the Commedia printed in Venice by Matteo Capcasa (di Codeca), whose first edition is dated to March 1491 (see R64485). It differs in several respects from its earlier counterpart. First and foremost, the recto of the first sheet <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>a1r</a> acts as a title page, presenting the author’s name in large gothic type (‘Danthe alegieri fiorentino’). This means that the prefatory material usually associated with Landino’s ‘Comento’ begins on the verso of the first sheet <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(10);return false;'>a1v</a>. The layout of the poem and commentary follows the visual scheme of the March 1491 edition quite closely but is not identical in its contents, with the sidenotes in particular being visibly expanded. These printed marginalia were important to Pietro da Figino, the corretore (editor) of the text, who mentions them but not the images in the colophon at the end of the edition.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Capcasa does however reuse all the woodcuts from his earlier edition, apart from the block for Inf. IX <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(126);return false;'>g1v</a> which is here replaced with a repletion of the block for Inf. VIII <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(117);return false;'>f5r</a>. The full-page illustration for Inf. I is also placed within a second frame <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(30);return false;'>2a1v</a> which is repeated on the recto of the facing page <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(31);return false;'>2a2r</a>, presenting a lively double-page spread. Like Capcasa’s earlier imprint, this edition closes with the pseudonymous ‘Credo’, ‘Pater nostro’, and ‘Ave Maria di Dante’ <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(628);return false;'>O5v</a>. Unlike the earlier edition, it does not display the printer’s device, and the register is expanded to fill a whole page <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(629);return false;'>O6r</a>.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>This copy displays a sixteenth-century English panel-stamped binding in full dark brown calf over thick wooden boards, crafted by John Reynes (d. 1544), who was operative in London between 1520 and 1531. A heraldic panel stamp shows the royal arms of Henry VIII with dragon and greyhound supporters, shields bearing the cross of St George and the arms of the City of London, with the sun and moon filling the top corners; and the Tudor rose surrounded by an inscribed scroll supported by two angels, a pomegranate at the bottom, and two shields (cf. J.B. Oldham, Blind Panels of English Binders, 1958, plate XX, HE. 21). A manuscript inscription dated to 1520 <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(29);return false;'>2a1r</a> is signed by the cleric and scholar John Pennant (d. 1529), who studied at Cambridge (1502–15033) and in Italy (1513–1515), served as chamberlain (1515, 1517) and warden (1523–1525) of the English Hospice in Rome, was Chancellor of Wells diocese, and was canon prebendary of St Paul's in London from 1524 until his death in 1529 (cf. Alumni Cantabrigienses). Pennant sends the book as a gift to ‘Do[mino]. Morleyo’ (Lord Morley, Henry Parker, 1476-1556) a nobleman, diplomat, and translator. In his dedication Pennant compares the text to an edition of Petrarch (‘Ideo mentiebar hu[n]c Da[n]ten Petrarcha formosiorem, quo te in mei ac rer[um] mear[um] desyderium m[a]gis ince[n]dere[m]’ (Therefore, I wrongly claimed this Dante to be more beautiful than Petrarch, for whom, through you, my enthusiasm should have been more greatly inflamed). Marginal notes on <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(385);return false;'>z4r</a>, underlining of the text, and marginal markings on <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage();return false;'>Z7v-&1r</a> are possibly by Lord Morley. More inscriptions blotted over in ink and illegible but partially visible using multispectral imaging are visible on the upper margin of <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>a1r</a> and include an owner’s mark that readers ‘Edmundi Bedingfeld[is] junior[is]’, probably the younger Sir Edmund Bedingfield, nobleman and landowner (1479/80–1553). The book was purchased by The John Rylands Library in the early twentieth-century from J. & J. Leighton, who claimed that it was Henry VIII's copy presented to him by Morley (see J. and J. Leighton, Catalogue of early-printed and other interesting books, manuscripts and fine bindings, London [1905], page 2030). </p>
