Developing a series of interdisciplinary methods for studying early printed book illustrations, Matthew Collins explores the visual sources for the first illustrated editions of the Commedia, their narrative qualities, and their influence on Renaissance readers. The Early Printed Illustrations of Dante’s “Commedia” provides a systematic overview of the earliest illustrated editions of Dante’s poem, stretching from 1481 through 1596, and features over 230 illustrations.
In 1506, when Filippo Giunta printed an illustrated edition of the Commedia, which was edited by Girolamo Benivieni and included a derivation of Antonio Manetti’s discourse on the location, form, and measurements (il sito, la forma e le misure) of Dante’s Hell, it represented the start of something new, in part, but also the continuation of a tradition. The re-presentation of Manetti’s work, in the form of a fictional dialog between Benivieni and the then-deceased mathematician, was a new development in the reception history of the Commedia in that it was first of eleven printed editions of the poem in the Cinquecento to include cartographically oriented illustrations of the work. Perfectly aware that this Dialogo bears an unprecedented intertwining in print of text and image, Benivieni states in a second dialogue with Francesco da Meleto, also printed in this edition, that “these designs . . . make for a fuller understanding of the site of Inferno.” The enriching accompaniment in print of illustrations along with discourse on Hell’s topography was, indeed, an additive innovation.
But the Giunta Commedia also continued a tradition that was present among the fifteenth century editions. Manetti’s discussion on the layout of Dante’s Hell had some influence before the 1506 printing, notably on the commentary of Cristoforo Landino. In his introduction, first printed in 1481, Landino includes a section of his own on the “location, form and measurement of Inferno” in which he acknowledges his debt to “the work of our Antonio Tuccio Manetti.” Landino refers again to Manetti’s “mathematical genius” in a note on Inferno 3. The Florentine commentator’s indebtedness to Manetti is reemphasized in the Dialogo printed in the 1506 edition, as Benivieni begins his fictional conversation with Manetti via direct reference to the 1481 commentary: “the location and position of Inferno . . . Landino acknowledges to have taken in good part from you.” Indeed, through the 1481 printing, Manetti’s spatial and thus implicitly visual discourse, even if unaccompanied in print by images until 1506, was already being disseminated in this indirect and fragmented fashion. Keenly aware of this circulation and its partiality, in the Giunti-printed Dialogo between Benivieni and Manetti, the following words are playfully placed in the latter’s mouth regarding Landino’s comments, as he questions whether one needs to say more in print beyond what first appeared in 1481: “is that not enough?” Benivieni, of course, responds that it is not, and thus the dialogue continues.
Apart from Landino’s well-circulated commentary, though possibly a direct result of it, Manetti’s seminal study of Dante’s infernal topography likely informed Botticelli’s map of Hell, which also predated this 1506 printing. Even well before both Botticelli and Manetti, Nardo di Cione’s mid-Trecento fresco rendering of Inferno in Santa Maria Novella gestured toward an interest in the layout of Dante’s Hell; to the extent that this fresco belongs to this tradition—and it could even be proposed as its founding—one could argue that from early in its development, this discourse was heavily visual. Thus, the Giunta printing was in part an innovation—in that it was the printed commentary on the layout of Hell that was accompanied by illustrations—but it was also a continuation of a longer standing discourse conveyed through both words and images.
Also printed in 1506, in addition to the Giunta Commedia, was an exclusively paratextual book, again by the Giunti, in which the poem was not printed but the Dialogo was, alongside the same seven woodcut illustrations that appeared in the edition that included Dante’s text. This, in a sense, began another line of Commedia-related works in the Cinquecento that engaged in an exclusively paratextual fashion with the topography of Dante’s afterlife. This development, inextricably intertwined with illustrated editions of the Commedia from its very origins, indicates the importance of this line of inquiry into Dante’s poem in the Cinquecento. It is one thing to read what could be viewed as secondary matter, and quite another to handle an entire book that focuses on an aspect of a text that is not included within those pages. Paratext was elevated to the status of text. A noteworthy continuation in this exclusively paratextual line, as one might nonetheless refer to it, is the 1544 printing of Pierfrancesco Giambullari’s intervention into this discourse, for which there were later related printings, none accompanied by the text of the poem itself.
In a maneuver reminiscent of Benivieni’s gestures in the Dialogo toward previous interventions on Hell’s layout, namely Landino’s notes, Giambullari begins his discussion with an acknowledgement of the “most virtuous labors of Antonio Manetti,” but suggests there is yet more to say and clarify. Similarly conscious of the importance of illustrations to accompany discussion on the site, form, and measurement of Hell, and evidently aware of the need to acknowledge predecessors in this visual facet of the discourse, Giambullari’s 1544 Location, form, and measurements (Sito, forma, & misure) is also illustrated by woodcuts.
(excerpted from chapter 5)