A handsome copy of Sansovino’s lavishly illustrated edition of Dante, with 96 woodcuts of the circles of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, and the striking title portrait of Dante himself, crowned in laurel. The text is the first edition to contain both commentaries by Cristoforo Landino and Alessandro Vellutello, and is dedicated by Sansovino to Pope Pius V.
The nearly 100 wonderful, and detailed woodcuts are of varying sizes, and executed in exceptional detail. The larger depict the poet’s journey, and his entry into each of the three realms; the smaller depict the different circles of each, the people and (in the case of the Inferno) the punishments to be found there. The blocks from which they are printed were originally cut for Francesco Marcolini’s 1544 edition, and all but one are used here; they had a long life, and were reused by Marcolini for his edition of Doni’s I Mondi in 1552-53, by Sessa for three editions - the present, another in 1578, and 1596 - and 100 years later, 79 out of the original 85 blocks were used in 1696 by Girolamo Albrizzi ‘for a Venice edition of Giovanni Palazzi’s Compendio della Comedia di Dante Alighieri’ (Mortimer, 146). Marcolini’s connection with Titian, and the presence of designs attributed to Titian in other of the printer’s work - see the frontispiece to Aretino’s Stanze (1537) - raise the tempting possibility that woodcuts here, and elsewhere in his oeuvre are attributable to him, though this is not mentioned by Mortimer. There are smaller, marginal diagrams also from Marcolini on Z2v - quadrants - and VV5 - angles.
Signed ‘AB’, this is the first appearance of the woodcut portrait of the poet, and lends this edition its epithet ‘al gran naso’, ‘of the large nose’; it has been connected to Vasari’s painting of six Tuscan poets in which Dante features, and similarities drawn between the ear-tabs of his cap, his open collar, the wreath, and the turn of his head (see Mortimer, Italian, 148).
Portion of outer blank margin of title page removed with crude early paper repair, not touching text, sporadic foxing, some browning to head of text block, bit overall in good condition.
Provenance: 1. Gilt armorial stamp of Prince Ludwig Karl Otto zu Salm-Salm (1721-1778), art collector. 2. Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet, Edinburgh; this volume lot 1143 in their sale Sotheby’s, 11 April 1960, purchased by 3. bookseller Alan G. Thomas (1911-92) for £24; exlibris of Clifford Baylis to front pastedown.
Edit16 CNCE 1171. Adams I, D103. Brunet II, 504. Mortimer, 148.
