Dante Early Printed : Comento di Christophforo Landino fiorentino sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri poeta fiorentino

Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

Dante Early Printed

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This famous edition is the first printed Commedia to include a full set of engravings for every canto of Inferno and Purgatorio, plus one for the start of Paradiso. These sixty-eight woodcuts are printed from 60 large rectangular blocks, which echo aspects of the engravings first produced for Niccolo della Magna’s 1481 Commedia (see Spencer 17280). These woodcuts depict the main narrative elements of the canti, although some are misordered and/or repeated (see Giancarlo Petrella, Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Brescia, Bonino Bonini, 1487. Repertorio iconografico delle silografie (Milan: Edizioni CUSL, 2012), page 4). The images are placed within decorative, white-on-black woodcut borders. The woodcut for Inferno XIII [h8r] is the only one printed without a border. Apart from this block, which is printed under a paragraph of commentary, all the others are full page illustrations. These images have been attributed to two different artists working in Brescia: the illustrator of an edition of Aesopus moralisatus also printed by Bonino in 1487; and the Brescian engraver Giovanni Antonio (fl. 1490–1519).</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The poem and commentary are printed in a roman typeface. The layout follows very closely that of Octavianus Scotus’ 1484 edition and reproduces the text of the first edition of the Landino’s Comento, printed in Florence in 1481, with some orthographic shifts. As in these earlier editions, running titles announce the cantica and canto number at the top of each page. Sections of the poem are surrounded by longer pieces of commentary and guide letters are present throughout the edition, inviting the inclusion of illuminated initials at the start of each canto and each section of the commentary. Larger blanks are left for the opening initials of the three cantiche, only the one for Paradiso is signalled with a guide letter.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>This copy was purchased in 1906 by Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) from Giuseppe Lando, conte Passerini (d. 1932), a librarian, literary critic and Dante scholar. The <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(639);return false;'>spine</a> of the binding shows the crest of the British art collector Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753). There are extensive sixteenth-century manuscript marginal annotations to the text of the Inferno [quires a-r]—these mostly comprise textual corrections to the poem and some to the commentary as well as to the running titles—and maniculae of various types and styles. Also visible is the occasional use of a red ink key to footnote the text of the poem <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(72);return false;'>c7v</a>; <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(73);return false;'>c8r</a> and some more lengthy marginalia, often cropped by the binder <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(87);return false;'>d7r</a>; <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(88);return false;'>d7v</a>; <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(412);return false;'>hh3v</a>; <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(517);return false;'>B6r</a>.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Leaf <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(139);return false;'>h1r</a> bears the later state of the woodcut for Inferno XI, with the inscription removed from the cut and printed in moveable type, and line 2 of the letterpress text begins 'propriamēte dixe'; on <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(153);return false;'>h8r</a>, line 1 of the letterpress begins 'lo di Priāo', with the woodcut, the wood of the Harpies, found without the border below the 17 lines of commentary; leaf <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(154);return false;'>h8v</a> begins with lines 1-15 of Canto XIII of the Inferno with relevant commentary; line 1 of leaf <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(189);return false;'>l4r</a> begins et uolti a dextra, whilst on <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(192);return false;'>l5v</a> the woodcut of <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(139);return false;'>h1r</a> is repeated in a third state, without inscription, but with an image of a round open tomb inserted in the centre.</p>