La Divina Commedia di Dante Allighieri. Tomo I [-III].

Three volumes, royal folio (444 x 294 mm). [12], xxxvi, [2], 205, [8]; [4], 207, [1], xx; [4], 207, [1], xxxvii pages.Uniformly bound in nineteenth-century English brown calf, covers within border with Greek motifs, floral tools at the corners. Spines with six raised bands, rebacked. Title and volume numbering on double morocco lettering-piece. A few scratches on the covers. Marbled pastedowns and flyleaves. Dotted fillets on board edges, inside dentelles. Gilt edges. A fine copy, foxing in places.

Provenance: Mary Anne Houlton (ex-libris on the front pastedowns); Livio Ambrogio collection.

The first edition of the Commedia printed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813), in three magnificent volumes in royal folio, limited to only 130 copies, and immediately sold out. The text was edited by the renowned Dante scholar from Verona Giovanni Jacopo Dionisi (1724-1808), on the basis of the famous Santa Croce codex of the Biblioteca Laurenziana (ms xxvi. sin. 1). Dionisi also assembled a vast Dante collection. To Dionisi belonged the superb copy of the 1472 Mantuan edition of the Commedia, owned by the dedicatee of the edition Filippo Nuvoloni himself, and a precious Dantean compilation from the fifteenth century, both included in the collection here presented.