The Venetian Illustrated Book


Producing illustrations, principally woodcuts, by mechanical means preceded the invention of printing by movable type. The first illustrated book in Italy was produced in Rome by Ulrich Hahn in 1467: the Meditationes of Johannes de Turrecremata contained 34 woodcuts. Florence eventually dominated the book illustration field, especially after the new techniques of copperplate and intaglio engraving were perfected there. Venice did not produce illustrated books extensively until the last decade of the 15th century. It was not until 1489 that one encounters all of the characteristics of a Venetian illustrated book in Matteo di Codecà da Parma's Devote meditatione of pseudo-Bonaventura, with vignettes.

Both the 1491 and 149[2] editions of the Divine Comedy are splendid examples of the Venetian illustrated book. They go far beyond the previous illustrative programs of 1481 and 1484 to include one hundred woodcut vignettes, one for each of the poem's cantos. The Benali/Codecà edition enlarges the illustrations at the beginning of each of the poem's three cantiche to folio size. The illustrations are interesting both in their origin and subsequent history. Those to Inferno I-XIX are apparently based upon the plates in the edition of 1481, and so have a certain connection with Botticelli's designs. With slight alterations, the three full-page woodcuts of 149[2] reappear in Matteo di Codecà da Parma's solo edition of 1493; the Inferno woodcut is also used in the editions of 1497 and 1507, and the three initial woodcuts of 149[2] reappear with differences in ornamentation in 1529. The vignettes of the 149[2] edition were also used in the editions of 1493, 1507 and 1529; the same designs appeared in enlarged form and better executed in 1497.

The small b which is found on a number of the illustrations, and is supposed by some to be the initial of the name of the artist who designed them, and by others to stand for the workshop in which the blocks were cut, occurs also in a number of other Venetian books, including the Bible printed by Giovanni Ragazzo for Lucantonio Giunta in 1490, the Vite dei santi padri, the Boccaccio and Masuccio of 1492, the Epistole ed evangelii of 1495, the Terence of1497, and the famous Hypnerotomachia of 1499.