La comedia di Dante Aligieri
La comedia di Dante Aligieri / con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellvtello Impressa in Vinegia: Per Francesco Marcolini ad instantia di Alessandro Vellutello, Gugno [sic] 1544
This mid-16th century edition of Dante features a commentary—again surrounding Dante’s text—by the poet and scholar Alessandro Vellutello. There are also 3 full-page and 84 smaller woodcuts; shown here is an image from Paradiso depicting Dante and Beatrice. The illustrations are very faithful to Dante’s text, and some scholars believe Vellutello may have created the preparatory drawings for them. Vassar’s copy includes a note in Italian which describes this edition, written on the letterhead of the British Museum and pasted to the front endpaper. Some pages at the beginning are missing, but on those that follow are numerous contemporary annotations, jotted down in the margins. The book was a gift of Dorothy Meigs Eidlitz of the class of 1914, in honor of Professor Lucy Maynard Salmon of the History Department.