Vita Nuova di Dante. Proemio di Benedetto Croce.

Large 4° (343x243 mm). Printed on vellum.vi, [2], 101, [3] pages. Printer's device in red on the verso of the last leaf. Original green morocco, covers framed within a richly gilt tooled border. Spine with five raised bands, title and imprint in gilt lettering. Double fillets on board edges, and inside dentelles. Gilt edges. Marbled cardboard slipcase. In perfect condition.

Provenance: Livio Ambrogio collection.

One of the only five copies printed on vellum of the deluxe edition of the Vita Nuova published by the renowned private press founded by the printer and scholar Giovanni Mardersteig (1892-1977) in 1922 in Montagnola, near Lugano in Switzerland. The edition was issued in a total of 230 copies, 225 of which were printed on handmade Fabriano paper. The text of Dante's work is the standard scholarly one established by the Italian Dante Society and the prefatory essay was written by the leading Italian philosopher of the time (and important book collector) Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), who declares that Mardersteig's Vita Nuova “is more beautiful, perhaps, than any previous edition, though there have been some very lavish ones. In this edition, quite properly, the reader who is susceptible to poetry is left alone with Dante”.
Starting with the name he chose for his hand press – Officina Bodoni – Mardersteig's desire to emulate the celebrated printer and typecutter Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) by continuing the Bodonian tradition of fine printing is clear. The text of the Vita Nuova is set in original Bodoni types: Mardersteig was in effect granted the privilege of casting his type from the original matrices used by his illustrious eighteenth-century predecessor, preserved in the Museo Bodoniano in Parma.
In 1927 the Officina Bodoni moved to Verona. It changed its name to Stamperia Valdonega, and is still active today as a private press producing books of exceptionally high quality. In 1936 Mardersteig began personally to design typefaces for his books; one of the most famous is the so-called Dante font, cut by Charles Malin and so named because it was first used in 1955 for setting the Trattatello in laude di Dante by Giovanni Boccaccio.
The magnificent volumes published by the Officina Bodoni – with the well-known printer's device symbolically representing, as Mardersteig himself explained, the terrestrial globe together with the emblem of the Christian religion – have always been highly praised both by printers and bibliophiles, and widely sought after and collected for the quality of the materials Mardersteig used in their making and the elegance and beauty of their design and production.