The first survey of Hell!
By ALIGHIERI, Dante [and] MANETTI, Antonio , 1506
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Commedia di Dante insieme con uno dialogo circa el sito et misure dello inferno.

  • Author: ALIGHIERI, Dante [and] MANETTI, Antonio
  • Publication place: Firenze,
  • Publisher: Filippo di Giunta,
  • Publication date: 20 agosto, 1506.
  • Physical description: Octavo (145 by 85mm), 312pp with 8 large or full-page woodcuts, late nineteenth century binding by Tommaso Laengner (Milan) in full green morocco, lettered in gilt to spine, gilt edges. Collation: a6; b-z8; &8; A-F8; G10; H-P8. [303] ll.
  • Inventory reference: 21970

Notes

“The first printed maps of Dante’s hell and, as such, the beginning of a venerable tradition” (Cachey).

The tantalizing details in ‘Dante’s Divine Comedy’ led a number of medieval scholars and artists to seek geographic and cosmographic knowledge from the work. “During the fifteenth century, the Florentine architect and mathematician Antonio Manetti decided that one could gather the information presented in ‘The Inferno’ and extrapolate from it to map out precisely the size, shape and location of Dante’s Hell” (Padron).

Manetti, in his ‘Commedia’, was one of the earliest to see that cartography offered another way to situate literary landscapes in the natural world: the Literary Map was born! He may also be considered the first person to have measured Hell (!). His calculations were included and, crucially, illustrated, with seven maps as an addendum to this, the Filippo Giunta edition of Dante, edited by Girolamo Benivieni, ‘Dialogo di Antonio Manetti: Cittadino fiorentino circa al sito, forma, & misure del lo inferno di Dante Alighieri poeta excellentissimo’ ‘Dialogue of Antonio Manetti, Florentine Citizen, Concerning the Site, Form and Measurements of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri, Most Excellent Poet’.

Indeed, as the author of the 1506 edition argues, readers should consult maps and seafaring charts to accurately navigate the poem’s geography. “Comparing maps in editions of Dante… to contemporary maps in print reveals how the Comedy might have been interpreted through cartography and speaks to the dialogue between geography and literature in the [sixteenth] century. Maps also illuminate how cartographical interpretations of the poem began to shore up Dante’s authority in scientific culture” (Langer).

Rarity
We are only aware of three complete examples of this edition appearing at auction in the past 40 years (Minerva Auctions, Rome, 2013; Bonhams, London, 2010 (with 18 leaves supplied from another example); and Christies, Rome, 1997).

Bibliography

  1. de Batines, I, 64-66
  2. Cachey, 453
  3. Gamba, 386
  4. Langer, https://library.brown.edu/create/poetryofscience/
  5. Ortolja-Baird, 44, 47
  6. Padron, 260-265
  7. Parker, 87-89.

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