DANTE Alighieri. Dante col sito, et forma dell’Inferno tratta dalla istessa descrittione del poeta.

£8,000 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

‘You Read Dante, My Lord’ – The Earl of Aberdeen’s Copy DANTE Alighieri. Dante col sito, et forma dell’Inferno tratta dalla istessa descrittione del poeta. [(Colophon:) Venice, in the house of Aldo Manuzio and Andrea Torresano . August 1515.] 8vo. Early nineteenth-century red straight-grained morocco, supralibros of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen blocked to boards in gilt, borders filleted in gilt, flat spine ruled and lettered directly in gilt, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, green silk place-marker; ff. [ii], 244, [2 (diagrams)], [1], italic type, woodcut Aldine devices to title-page, a1r, and final verso (supplied from another copy), three-line capital spaces with guide letters at the beginning of each canticle, three woodcut plates by Trifone Gabriele at end (two double-pages), one depicting the layout of Hell (ff. H4v-H5r), and other two with schematic diagrams of the sins in Hell (ff. H5v-H6r) and Purgatory (f. H6v); extremities and spine slightly rubbed; internally very good, lacking blank H7, upper margin of plates trimmed with loss of upper border, not affecting image but touching a few letters of Purgatory diagram; early ownership inscription ‘Di Thomaso C…’ to f. a1r (washed); nineteenth-century shelflabels to front pastedown. The first illustrated Aldine edition of Dante’s Commedia, and the second overall, from the library of George Hamilton-Gordon (1784–1860), 4th Earl of Aberdeen, the last British Prime Minister to have undertaken the Grand Tour. Pr

• Binding: Hardcover

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