Dante Alighieri - Divina Commedia di Imola. L'Inferno del Duca Visconti - conservato alla Biblioteca Comunale di Imola - 2020

Divine Comedy of Imola: The Duke Visconti's Inferno - ms. 76
Preserved at the Imola Municipal Library

Manoscritto MS 76 represents one of the most fascinating figurative testimonies of the Divine Comedy created within the cultural context of the Visconti court in the 15th century.
The Imola cards, dating from around the mid-15th century, display a formal elegance, a richness of color, and a narrative care fully consistent with the prestigious book production associated with the Milanese ducal power.
The section currently preserved in Imola comprises 21 cards, all part of the ancient Visconti code, featuring splendid miniatures dedicated to Hell. The scenes, intricate and vivid, reflect the very high quality that characterized the cultural commissions of the Visconti lordship, which promoted a refined era of illuminated manuscripts intended for courtly and intellectual circles of rank.
Inferno (ms. 76) is indeed one of the most richly decorated medieval copies of Dante's masterpiece, created for the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. It is considered one of the finest works attributed to the so-called Maestro delle Vitae Imperatorum, a highly esteemed illuminator in northern Italy during the first half of the fifteenth century.
The code is now divided into two parts: the Bibliothèque nationale de France holds the larger portion, with 59 images (ms. Italien 2017), while 21 sheets with 13 miniatures are kept at the Biblioteca.
Imola
The present reproduction exactly reproduces this rare and valuable section from Imola.

An extraordinary collection story
The manuscript comes from the famous Visconti-Sforza library of Pavia, where it was still registered in 1469. After the French invasion of Italy, it passed into the hands of Louis XII, King of France. He probably gifted it shortly thereafter to Giovanni Caracciolo, Duke of Melfi, in recognition of his services to the crown. The work then passed to Caracciolo's son-in-law, Antoine de Cardaillac, and later to his heirs. In 1835, it was rediscovered in a castle in Dordogne by the scholar Gaston de Flotte, who purchased it and transferred it to Marseille. Between 1836 and 1837, he arranged with the exile from Imola, Giuseppe Zaccheroni, for the publication of the then unpublished text; Zaccheroni published the critical edition of the Inferno in 1838.
Returned to Italy and elected as a deputy in 1865, Zaccheroni dedicated a copy of his edition of the Inferno to his city's library in 1866, enriching it by inserting some handwritten sheets of the codex in his possession: these sheets constitute the current ms. 76 of Imola.
The remaining part of the Visconteo code was sold in 1887 by the heirs of de Flotte to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where it is still preserved.

Complete item with case

Published by the publisher Imago - The nobility of the facsimile.