1477, Venice: WINDELIN OF SPEYER
This is the first edition of the Comedy to be accompanied by commentary.
The book was edited by Cristoforo Berardi da Pesaro, probably the same "Christophoro"
who edited Windelin's 1470 edition of Petrarch's Canzoniere, the
other great vernacular classic of the period. Printers and publishers consistently
entered the vernacular literary market with the publication of a Petrarch
followed by a Dante.
The text attributes the commentary to the pre-humanistic period author Benvenuto
da Imola (completed in 1380). In reality though it is the earlier vernacular
commentary of Jacopo della Lana, composed during the first half of the 14th
century. The misattribution is probably intentional, and can be explained
by the fact that Benvenuto da Imola would have been a more resonant name
for Renaissance readers.
The editor showed good intuition in adding a commentary to the text of the
poem. He understood that Dante had become in his own way a classic. By way
of introduction, Boccaccio's "Life of Dante" is published
here for the first time, together with a summary of the poem, and the arguments
from the Foligno edition. At the end, the editor placed Dante's "Credo,"
Busone da Gubbio's chapters, and a sonnet traditionally attributed to Boccaccio:
"Dante Alighieri son, Minerva oscura" (I am Dante Alighieri, obscure
Minerva), as well as the editor's own horrible sonnet, which serves as a
colophon.
Windelin's was the first edition of the Comedy carried out with both
historical and didactic intentions. Significantly, it was produced in Venice,
a great center for the book trade but where a contemporary vernacular literary
tradition had not yet emerged, as it had in places like Naples, Mantua and
Milan. The edition is set in a miniature gothic type, in contrast to all
other 15th-century editions of Dante's poem which featured some form of
roman type. In fact, following the manuscript tradition, gothic was usually
reserved in Italy for religious texts, while roman or humanistic type was
used for secular works. The two copies of the Windelin edition displayed
here show further evidence of how manuscript conventions influenced early
typography. The Notre Dame copy appears as it did when it left the press,
whereas The Newberry Library copy was taken to a manuscript illuminator,
who painted in the spaces left by the printer for initial capitals and paragraph
markers.
No edition of the 15th century applies the epithat "divina" to
the poem. But at the end of Windelin's, in the editor's humble verses, we
find the epithet applied to the poet -- "inclito et divo dante alleghieri
Fiorentin poeta..." (illustrious and divine Dante Alighieri Florentine
poet ...) -- long before the adjective "divina" came to be applied
to the title of the poem in Lodovico
Dolce's Giolito edition of 1555.
