by Alessandro Ferrini

Dante’s poem was an immediate great success, as demonstrated by the over six hundred manuscripts that circulated in the fourteenth century, immediately after the poet’s death.
When between the 1460s and 1470s German printers introduced the technique of printing with movable type, the Comedy was among the privileged texts in Italy. Therefore, among the so-called incunabula, that is, the first books printed until the beginning of the sixteenth century, we find various editions of Dante’s poem.
The first in chronological order dates back to April 1472 and was printed in Foligno in eight hundred copies by the German printer Giovanni Numeister, together with Evangelista Angelini di Trevi, with the collaboration of the goldsmith from Foligno Emiliano Orfini.

… continue reading Homage to Dante: the incunabula of the “Divine Comedy”