DANTE ALIGHIERI

La Commedia.

      Bernardinus Benalius and Matteo Capcasa 3 March 1491, Venice - Folio (310mm x 220mm). ff [11], 291, [2]; (10, a-z8, &8, 8, 8, A8, B6, C-I8, K6, L8). Roman letter. Twelve-, six-, and four-line woodcut initials, four full page woodcuts (one repeated) and ninety-seven woodcuts in text, sixty-one lines, text surrounded by commentary. Contemporary limp vellum, professionally rebacked to style. Very occasional contemporary marginal annotations. Title page slightly dusty on lower outer corner. Some occasional thumb marks and stains. Sporadic, very light waterstaining to outer blank margins, and very light spotting to margins in places. A small stain on blank upper margins of leaves 129-131, and a small paper flaw in leaf 138 with no loss to text. A small marginal tear restored just touching the border of woodcut on C1, as well as a tiny tear on GIIII just affecting one letter of side notes. A small worm trail in blank inner margins of leaves 180-190, well away from text. Overall, a very good, clean, crisp copy, with excellent impression of the woodcuts, and wholly unsophisticated."Dante's theme, the greatest yet attempted in poetry, was to explain and justify the Christian cosmos through the allegory of a pilgrimage. To him comes Virgil, the symbol of philosophy, to guide him through the two lower realms of the next world, which are divided according to the classifications of the 'Ethics' of Aristotle. Hell is seen as an inverted cone with its point where lies Lucifer fixed in ice at the centre of the world, and the pilgrimage from it a climb to the foot of and then up the Purgatorial Mountain. Along the way Dante passes Popes, Kings and Emperors, poets, warriors and citizens of Florence, expiating the sins of their life on earth. On the summit is the Earthly Paradise where Beatrice meets them and Virgil departs. Dante is now led through the various spheres of heaven, and the poem ends with a vision of the Deity. The audacity of his theme, the success of its treatment, the beauty and majesty of his verse, have ensured that his poem never lost its reputation. The picture of divine justice is entirely unclouded by Dante's own political prejudices, and his language never falls short of what he describes" (Printing and the Mind of Man). Superbly illustrated with one hundred woodcuts, this edition contains not only the commentary of Cristoforo Landino, but also marginal glosses to further orient the reader. Edited by Pietro da Figino, described in the colophon as "master in theology and excellent preacher of the Order of [Friars] Minor." Based on textual evidence, some scholars believe this edition was actually printed on 3 March 1492 and that perhaps the printers simply made an error in dating their work because the Venetian new year, at that time, began on 1 March. The text of Landino's commentary on this edition first appeared in print in the famous illustrated edition of 1481 at Florence, surrounding the text of the poem as here. Landino (1424-1504), poet and humanist philosopher under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, produced his commentary hastily; still, it became the dominant commentary through the end of the sixteenth century.The design of the woodcuts in this edition is attributed to the Master of Pico della Mirandola's Pliny, who also illustrated Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by the Gregori brothers in Venice, 1492 and the astonishing Malermi Bible of 1490. The woodcuts exhibit the highly stylized characteristics of the late 1480s and early 1490s, typical of renaissance Venetian art. Having developed from the German model, earlier woodblocks were usually cut in outline with little ornamentation or embellishment, but by the third decade after Gutenberg's invention, Venetian and Florentine styles emerged. Innovative compositional formats, the emphasis on the human body -- all hallmarks of Italian Renaissance art -- began to make their way into woodcut design. Venetian woodcuts exhibit a freedom of line that emphasizes the naturalness of the human figure and the ease with which it is set