1544 1st Edtn LA COMEDIA DI DANTE ALIGHIERI By Dante Alighieri / Alessandro Vellutello Good Dante, Divine Comedy, Poetry

£5,000.00

1544 1st Edition ,
LA COMEDIA DI DANTE ALIGHIERI
Con la nova espositione de Alessandro Vellutello
By Dante Alighieri / Alessandro Vellutello
Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 – 14 September 1321), most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa (modern Italian: Commedia) and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.

Illustrated By:

Format: Hardcover,
Language: Italian
Dust Jacket: No Jacket, Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

Published By: Francesco Marcolini for Alessandro Vellutello, Venice

Medium octavo (8vo 6+1⁄2 × 9+1⁄4 165 × 235),Pages 463

ISBN:

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso); he is first guided by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice. Of the books, Purgatorio is arguably the most lyrical of the three, referring to more contemporary poets and artists than Inferno; Paradiso is the most heavily theological, and the one in which, many scholars have argued, the Divine Comedy's most beautiful and mystic passages appear.

Alessandro Vellutello (born 1473) was a Lucchese writer, poet, and scholar active in Venice in the first half of the sixteenth century. In June 1544 his ‘new explanation’ of Dante’s Comedia was published in Venice by Francesco Marcolini featuring 87 engraved illustrations, possibly executed by Giovanni Britto, an engraver who worked for Marcolini.[2] The images were conceived alongside Vellutello’s commentary, and both sought to provide an interpretation free from the influence or limitations imposed by previous explanations of Dante. The highly detailed illustrations in La Comedia di Dante Alighieri con la nova esposizione bear great faithfulness to Dante’s original text, and Vellutello himself may have made preparatory drawings which were used as schematics for the final woodcuts.[4] While Vellutello’s commentary did not enjoy particular success, the engravings are still regarded as the "most distinctive Renaissance renditions of the poem after Botticelli's"

SKU: BTETM0002341
Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 30, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 2Kg

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Good - Large 8vo, 87 wood-engraved illustrations, 3 of them full-page, title partly laid down, 17th century vellum, repairs to lower margin of AA2 and AA3 verso, dampstain to inner margin and some text at beginning, heavier dampstaining at end, a few marginal manuscript pointing fingers and a few marginal notes in an early hand, binding worn.
Con gratia de la illustrissima Signoria di Venegia, che nessuno la possa imprimere, ne impressa uenere nel termino di dieci anni, Sotto le pene che in quella si contengeno [With the grace of the most illustrious Lordship of Venice, that no one can imprint it, nor will it imprint it within the term of ten years, under the penalties that are contained therein] Please see photos as part of condition report