La Divina Commedia con le note di Paolo Costa, e gli argomenti dell’Ab. G. Borghi. Adorna di 500 vignette disegnate ed incise in legno da D. Fabris ed una vita appositamente scritta dal Prof. Ab. Melchior Missirini. Seconda edizione originale italiana eseguita sotto la direzione dei sigg. Proff. G. B. Niccolini e G. Bezzuoli.

Four volumes, 8° (248 x 165 mm). [2], xxvii, 491, [1]; 515, [1]; 528; viii, 191, [3], 221, [3] pages. Each page framed within border of two fillets. On the title-pages portrait of Dante. 500 illustrations in text, after John Flaxman, Bartolomeo Pinelli and Luigi Ademollo, mainly engraved by Domenico Fabris. Fifty vignettes in the text of the Vita Nuova, designed and engraved by Fabris. Original editorial illustrated wrappers. Title printed on the spinse. Minor wears to the spine, specially in the fourth volume; covers somewhat stained. A fine, uncut copy.

Provenance: Paolo Cagna Ninchi (ex-libris on the front pastedowns of each volume); Livio Ambrogio collection.

An elegant edition – printed "in carta lustrata appositamente fabbricata” (Batines I, p. 190) – edited by Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1782-1861) and Giuseppe Bezzuoli. The text of the Commedia is supplemented with the notes by Paolo Costa (1771-1836), first published in 1819-1821, and the arguments by Giuseppe Borghi (1790-1847). Furthermore, the fourth volume contains the Vita di Dante Alighieri by Melchiorre Missirini (1773-1849). The Divina Commedia is richly illustrated with the engravings executed by the painter Domenico Fabris (1812-1893) after John Flaxman (1755-1826), Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835) and Luigi Ademollo (1764-1849). The present copy belongs to the issue lacking, in the first volume, the allegorical frontispiece signed ‘Domenico Fabris 1841'.