Vita di Dante Alighieri Poeta Fiorentino, Composta per Messer Giouanni Boccaccio. Con Priuilegio di N.S. per anni Dieci.

8° (144 x 94 mm). Collation: [*]⁴, A-E⁸, F¹⁰. [3], 49 leaves, wanting fols. [*]4 and F10 blanks. Blank spaces for capitals, with printed guide letters. Eighteenth-century hazel calf. Covers framed within three gilt fillets. Smooth spine, divided in compartments by gilt fillets and decorated with floral tools; title lettered vertically in gilt on red morocco lettering-piece. Pastedowns and flyleaves in marbled paper, inside dentelles. Green silk bookmark, gilt edges. A very fine copy. Copious marginalia in a seventeenth-century hand (trimmed). On the recto of the second front flyleaf the lenghty note, in an eighteenth-century hand, 'è rarissima questa edizione perche vi si vede alla Pag. 42. f°. v.° | f.° una menzione del Libro della Monarchia composto dal Dante del quale le altre edizioni non parlano.'.

Provenance: 'Bibliothèque M. de Roissy, Maréchal-de-camp' (ownership inscription on the verso of the front flyleaf in marbled paper, perhaps referring to Joseph Antoine François Charles Michel De Roissy, b. 1751 and 'maréchal-de-camp' in 1786); Helmut N. Friedlander (1913-2008; ex-libris on the front pastedown; Christie's, The Helmut N. Friedlaender Library, New York, 23 April 2001): Livio Ambrogio collection.

The first separated edition of the Trattatello in laude di Dante, the first full-length biographyof Dante, first appeared in print in the Commedia published in 1477 by Vindelinus de Spira. The edition is dedicated by the printer Francesco Priscianese to Ludovico Pio.