Dante Early Printed : Comento di Christophoro Landino fiorentino sopra la comedia di Danthe Alighieri poeta fiorentino

Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

Dante Early Printed

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This is one of two editions of the Commedia printed in Venice in 1491, ‘MCCCCLXXXXI. adi .iii. marzo’ [i.e. 3 March 1491]. It contains 100 woodcuts, 1 of which (the full-page illustration for the start of Purgatorio <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(304);return false;'>s1v</a>) is repeated <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(306);return false;'>s2v</a> to allow the text of Purg. I to start on the recto of the page. These images are divided into full-page illustrations with decorative borders, presented at the start of each cantica, and smaller, square illustrations placed at the start of each canto. The borders for the full-page illuminations also appear in an edition of Petrarch’s Trionfi and Rime printed by the same shop in 1492/1493.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The text layout follows the now familiar format of poetic sections surrounded by prose commentary. While the introductory material is the same as that included in the earlier editions of Landino’s ‘Commento’, this edition contains another paratextual innovation, amplifying the relatively unintuitive system of side letters seen in the November edition into fully fledged side notes, printed in the margins throughout the text. The end matter does not reflect that of Plasiis’ November 1491 edition. Instead of printing Dante’s canzoni, this edition returns to the tradition first presented in Vindelinus de Spira’s 1477 Commedia of concluding the poem with the pseudonymous ‘Credo’, ‘Pater nostro’, and ‘Ave Maria di Dante’ <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(611);return false;'>L7r</a>.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The Rylands copy displays an Italian armorial painted in red into the blank shield in the border of the woodcut on <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(32);return false;'>a1v</a>, probably the arms of the Guarienti family of Verona, although in their arms correctly blazoned the three stars on the bend should be azure rather than red. It also shows a nineteenth-century bookseller's inscription on the <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(4);return false;'>front endpaper verso</a>, including the code: ETT/CTT. The binding is nineteenth-century in full grained dark purple goatskin, crafted by Binda of Milano (the Binda brothers bindery of Milan). Occasional sixteenth-century annotations appear in the copy, mostly reader's cross references (see, for example, <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(228);return false;'>n3v</a>: marking Leonardo Aretino in the commentary), with small crosses marking particular portions of text. Initials are occasionally hand-coloured in red ink, including paragraph marks and blank spaces for initials, which are sometimes filled in red. These are generally simple but occasionally feature decorative details, such as the face within the initial O <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(424);return false;'>[con]5v</a>. Some decorative elements are also highlighted in red.</p>