Dante Early Printed : Qui comi[n]cia la vita e costumi dello excelle[n]te Poeta vulgari Dante alighieri di Firenze honore e gloria delidioma Fiorentino...

Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

Dante Early Printed

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This folio-size edition of the Commedia was edited by Cristoforo Berardi and printed by Vindelinus de Spira in Venice in 1477. It was the first edition to appear with a commentary, the vernacular gloss of Iacopo della Lana. It also includes Giovanni Boccaccio’s Vita di Dante among its prefatory material and concludes with a series of pseudo-Dantean poems on religious themes, known as the ‘Credo di Dante’. The text is angular and gothic and is set out into two columns with ample space left to invite reader annotations, although this copy does not display marginalia. The text of each canto is printed in full and followed by the relevant section of the gloss. Irregular blank spaces appear throughout the edition, leaving space for the inclusion of diagrams. This practice was widely attested in the manuscript tradition transmitting della Lana’s commentary but is unprecedented in the history of the Commedia in print.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Each cantica is preceded by a series of summarising ‘Rubriche’, which repeat the narrative glosses printed in the Foligno edition of 1472. These are also printed at the start of each canto, where space is left for the inclusion of illuminated initials. The divisions between the three cantiche are clearly signalled with an ‘explicit’ phrase closing each section. This is the first edition to including running titles, which appear at the top of each page signalling the name of the relevant cantica. The edition concludes with a series of additional paratexts, including an unattributed ‘Credo’ thought to be by Jacopo della Lana; two ‘Capitoli’ on Dante respectively composed by Busone [Dei Raphaelli] da Gubbio and Dante’s son, Jacopo Alighieri; the ‘Credo’ pseudonymously attributed to Dante himself; and a verse colophon written by the editor Christoforo Berardi, in which the commentary is misattributed to Benvenuto da Imola, whose Latin gloss on Dante was very popular but later than della Lana’s and not in the vernacular.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The Rylands copy bears an oval armorial ink stamp on the opening page <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(7);return false;'>ā2r</a> with the the coat of arms and coronet of D. Luigi Sijlva, a member of the (De) Silva family, Milanese marquises whose library was sold in an auction in Paris in 1869 (see Gelli, J. '3500 ex libris italiani', pages 376–377). A manuscript note on the same leaf <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(7);return false;'>ā2r</a> records the purchase of the book in Venice 1729 by Luigi Silva and suggests that it is ‘rara perciò pregieuole’ [therefore rare and precious]. On the lower right corner of the <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(3);return false;'>front endpaper recto</a> a manuscript inscription by Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare records that he purchase the book in 1889 from Carlo Pinzano and collated it with a copy in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The copy was donated to The John Rylands Library on 13 May 1951 by Frederick’s son, John Josias Conybeare (d. 1967), in memory of his father.</p>