1497, Venice: PIETRO QUARENGI
According to some authorities, Matteo di Codecà da Parma collaborated
with Pietro Quarengi on this, the last 15th-century edition of the Divine
Comedy. It presented yet again the same series of woodcuts used in 1491,
'92 and '93, with only slight alterations. The text has been determined
to be a mere resetting of di Piasi's 1491 edition of the poem and Landino
commentary, thus confirming Quarengi's low reputation as an editor of vernacular
texts. But then incunable editions, like most editions of the classics today,
generally were not produced in response to literary or philological exigencies
so much as economic ones. At the turn of the century, there apparently existed
a market for yet another edition of the revised Landino commentary with
illustrations. And the potential for profit was real, for such books constituted
luxury items. For instance, the reported price for an unidentified incunabulum
of Dante's poem (almost certainly one of those displayed here from the 1490s)
was listed as one ducat, a price beyond the reach of all but institutional
buyers and wealthy individuals, in a city where four or five ducats per
month was an adequate income and anything above ten ducats represented relative
affluence.
