DANTE Lot n° 14

Dante con l'espositioni di Christoforo Landino e d'Alessandro Vellutello Venezia, Gio. Battista & Gio. Bernardo Sessa fratelli, 1596. In-4, full speckled calf. Spine with decorated nerves. Rubbing. [38] pp. ff. 392 ff. Old quality restorations to some pages. Edition decorated with numerous engravings illustrating the circles of hell. They are believed to have been created by Giovanni Britto after indicative drawings by Vellutello himself. The images have been praised for their fidelity to Dante's original text (Parker, World of Dante). 101 woodcuts, including three full-page illustrations. Six of the engravings are, as always, repeated several times. There are thus 93 original engravings. Portrait of Dante on the title page. This Divine Comedy with commentaries by Landino and Vellutello is the third Venetian edition by the humanist Francesco Sansovino, the two previous editions having appeared in 1564 and 1578. These Venetian editions, the first to contain these comments, are considered and appreciated as the first scholarly editions of the poem. Provenance stamp and a handwritten bookplate scratched into the frontispiece.