Abstract
Dante did not have an Idyllic Relationship with his home town. He was on the losing side politically, they chucked him out, and he spent the rest of his life in exile, where he wrote the Comedia, and Florence came in for considerable flak, which has ever since been a source of embarrassment for its citizens. The advent of the printing press saw the great poem translated into a new medium, first in Foligno in 1472, then elsewhere, but not in Florence. More embarrassment and a catching-up operation ensued, involving one of the biggest and most complicated printing enterprises of the fifteenth century. A huge edition on Royal paper imported from Fabriano with a brand new commentary by the acclaimed humanist Cristoforo Landino (1424–98), it was illustrated not with woodcuts (too infra dig) but with copper-plate vignettes designed by in-vogue artist Sandro Botticelli and engraved by Baccio Bandini. According to the colophon, publication was completed on 30 August 1481, a huge book with 372 leaves on thick paper; the engravings still had to be added and were something of a failure, with only nineteen being completed (one, however, in two versions). Placing them correctly in the spaces left in the typography proved a massive problem: only the first two were printed directly onto the sheets, the others, when present, were printed on separate sheets, cut out and pasted in. The majority of copies, however, lack the illustrations altogether.
Published Version
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