1487, Brescia: BONINO DE' BONINI

This Comedy with the Landino commentary is generally considered the masterpiece of Brescian printing during the 15th century. With its 68 woodcuts and typographical decorum, this folio edition evidently sought to present itself as unique in a market increasingly frequented by editions of Dante. It is the second illustrated edition of the Comedy, after the Florentine edition of 1481, but the first to be illustrated by woodcuts. Folio size designs illustrate all the cantos of the Inferno and Purgatorio and the first canto of the Paradiso. They are framed by beautiful borders cut upon a black background with classical motifs -- vases, swirls, ornamental masks -- all inserted within exquisitely crafted candelabra. The woodcuts are done by various hands, with the first nineteen based upon Botticelli's designs for the Florentine 1481 edition. The other woodcuts which adorn this Comedy in turn became models for later illustrated editionsof the poem, including the Venetian editions of the 1490s (see the next four items). The edition also had philological pretensions, and reveals the hand of a corrector who sought a measure of orthographic standardization. The text appears to have been based upon the collation (i.e., comparison) of the 1481 edition with a manuscript.

The Dalmatian Bonino Bonini came to Brescia in 1483 after initial experience as a printer in Venice (he published his only Venetian edition, Lactantius' Divinae institutiones, in 1475). Bonini combined excellent technical skill, good typographical taste, and a sharp sense for commercial organization. In eight years of activity between June 1483 and the beginning of 1491, Bonini printed more than forty editions, averaging 5.5 editions per year, the highest rate among all Brescian printers in the 15th century. More than half of his editions pertain to the humanistic genre of classics and commentaries to classics. Later during his career at Brescia he diversified into the lucrative legal market by offering juridical works and statutes. Bonino left Brescia in 1491 and resettled in Lyons, where he became a successful bookseller and editor.