Dante - Comedia - 1536

THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL: THE FIGURATIVE COMEDY OF THE STAGNINO - 99 ILLUSTRATIONS
The 99 woodcuts scattered through the text transform the poem into a true visual experience, populated by damned souls, monsters, infernal architectures and ultraterrestrial landscapes. The specimen described here, though incomplete, preserves intact the historical and material force of one of the most important Dante editions of early sixteenth-century Venice, testimony to the extraordinary diffusion of Dante in European printing culture.
This famous Venetian edition of 1536 of Dante Alighieri’s Comedy represents one of the fundamental moments in the typographic and iconographic fortune of the poem in Italian Renaissance culture. Printed by Bernardino Stagnino, it revisits and reshapes the great illustrated model inaugurated by the Venetian late fifteenth-century tradition, associating the poetic text with the well-known humanist commentary by Cristoforo Landino.
The volume is not merely a literary book: it is a visual and interpretive device, designed to guide the reader through the moral, political, and theological universe of the Comedy.
MARKET VALUE
The illustrated Venetian editions of the Comedy printed by Bernardino Stagnino have enjoyed a solid market for decades in the international Dantean collecting world. Complete and well-preserved specimens frequently reach valuations between 7,000 and 12,000 euros, with higher figures for copies with exceptional visual quality or important provenance. Incomplete copies but still preserving the original iconographic corpus and the contemporary binding maintain strong commercial and bibliographic interest, especially in the specialized market of Renaissance Italian literature and 16th-century illustrated books. The presence of the original wood engravings and Landinian commentary constitutes the main attraction for collectors and institutions.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Illustrated with 99 woodcuts in the text, including a full-page woodcut. Decorated initials and printer’s device at the colophon. Frontispiece reproduced on parchment paper. Leaves [9, of 28], 440. The fascicle of 12 leaves 2† and fascicle 2A are missing. Occasional marginal handwritten notes antique in all. Occasional small stains and foxing. Small light marginal ripple visible intermittently. Hinge with an external margin area of some fasciculi. Half of sheet E1 torn and historically supplied by elegant manuscript addition. Contemporary full vellum binding with manuscript titles on the spine. In old books, with a centuries-long history, some imperfections may be present that are not always noted in the description.

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Comedia del divino poeta Danthe Alighieri, con la dotta & leggiadra spositione di Christophoro Landino... In Vineggia, per m. Bernardino Stagnino, 1536. Dante Alighieri

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
The Stagnino edition of 1536 belongs to the great tradition of illustrated Venetian Dantean Comedies, one of the most influential editorial threads of Renaissance book culture. Venice, in the early sixteenth century, was the principal European center of commercial printing, and Dante had already become a national classic destined for scholars as well as a more broadly cultured public. Landino’s commentary, first published in the fifteenth century, had transformed the Comedy into a fully humanist text, providing historical, moral, and philosophical interpretations that contributed decisively to the canonization of the work.
From an iconographic viewpoint, this edition preserves the powerful figurative tradition derived from the earlier Venetian woodcut cycles. The images do not serve a merely decorative function; they accompany and interpret the text, visualizing infernal episodes, allegorical encounters, and eschatological scenes. The Renaissance reader thus traversed the poem through a sequence of narrative images, which greatly contributed to the visual diffusion of Dante’s imaginary.

The work also represents an essential document of Venetian typography culture of the 1530s: dense layout, continuous exegetical apparatus, dialogue between text and image, and a conception of the book as a total object of reading and contemplation. Even imperfect, a specimen of this edition retains very strong documentary and collecting value.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and died in Ravenna in 1321. Poet, philosopher, and statesman, he is considered the founder of the Italian literary language. The Divine Comedy, probably composed between 1304 and 1321, constitutes one of the absolute peaks of world literature and a monumental synthesis of medieval European culture, fusing theology, philosophy, politics, and poetry in a single grand ultraterrestrial journey.
Cristoforo Landino was born in Florence in 1424 and died in 1498. A humanist, philologist, and lecturer at the Florentine Studium, he was one of the central figures of Medici Humanism. His commentary on Dante’s Comedy contributed decisively to the humanist rereading of the poem and its definitive consecration as a classic of Italian culture.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The 1536 edition printed by Bernardino Stagnino sits within the long Venetian editorial tradition of illustrated Comedies. Stagnino, active in Venice in the first half of the sixteenth century, was among the printers who helped spread Italian illustrated literary works aimed at a cultured but relatively broad audience. The presence of Landino’s commentary and the woodcut cycle derives directly from the tradition inaugurated by the famous late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Venetian editions. Complete copies are today relatively rare on the international antiquarian market, especially with well-preserved woodcuts and in contemporary bindings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe, D93.
De Batines, Bibliographia dantesca, vol. I, pp. 81-82.
Essling, Les livres à figures vénitiens, n. 544.
Mambelli, Gli annali delle edizioni dantesche, n. 29.
Sander, Le Livre à Figures Italien, n. 2327.
ICCU / OPAC SBN, censimenti dell’edizione veneziana Stagnino 1536.
EDIT16, CNCE relativi alle edizioni dantesche veneziane del XVI secolo.