Dante Alighieri - La Divina Commedia - Zatta [3 Vol.] - 1784

DANTE ALIGHIERI

The Divine Comedy (Inferno – Purgatorio – Paradiso)
Venice, at Antonio Zatta e Figli, 1784

Three volumes in-8° (mm 157 × 100 approx.).
Pp. 396; 352; 392.

Venetian edition of the Divine Comedy published by Antonio Zatta e Figli within the celebrated series Parnaso italiano or Raccolta de’ poeti classici italiani edited by Andrea Rubbi. Each tome opens with the medallic portrait of Dante wearing the laurels and bears the title page: “Dante Alighieri – Tome Primo / Secondo / Terzo – Venezia MDCCLXXXIV – Presso Antonio Zatta, e Figli – Con Licenza de’ Sup. e Privilegio”.

The text is enriched with numerous copper-engraved plates (about a hundred), one for each canto, reductions of the famous plates of the larger Zatta edition of 1757-1758. The principal engravers are Cristoforo Dall’Acqua, Innocente Alessandri, Antonio Baratti, Gianantonio Zuliani and others. The vignettes vividly illustrate the most dramatic and visionary moments of the poem (the Dark Forest, Charon, Minotaur and Centaurs, Caco, Beatrice, the celestial spheres, the Empyrean, etc.). Each volume is closed by an Index of the vocabulary (edited by G. A. Volpi).

Full binding in ivory leather/synthetic ivory leather with grain, blue panels with gold titles on the spine (“Dante – The Divine Comedy – Inferno / Purgatorio / Paradiso”).

State of preservation:
• Missing the printed leaves corresponding to pp. 200-216 and 279-280 of the first volume (Inferno); they have been replaced with non-contemporary manuscript leaves (see the photograph of Canto XXXII).
• Some staining, foxing and light wear to the covers and corners, consistent with age and use.

Importance and rarity
This edition of 1784 represents one of the latest and most accessible seventeenth-century manifestations of the great Zatta iconographic project of 1757-58, the first major illustrated edition of the Comedy after nearly two centuries. In a reduced format and easier to consult, it preserves the entire suite of vignettes that had made the larger edition famous, making the narrative and symbolic power of Dante’s poem visible to a broader public.

Complete copies of the three cantiche with the full illustration set are today rather rare on the market, especially in a uniform binding.

The presence of numerous original engravings (even if in a smaller format) and the collation within Rubbi’s Parnaso italiano make it a piece of definite interest for collectors of eighteenth-century Venetian Dante editions and illustrated books.

A reference work for the history of Dantean illustration and for the dissemination of the Divine Comedy in late Enlightenment Italy.