La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri nell’arte del Cinquecento (Michelangelo, Raffaello, Zuccari, Vasari, ecc.). A cura di Corrado Ricci.

434 x 320 mm. xxviii, 324, [2] pages. Headings and shoulder notes printed in red. Frontiespiece with portrait of Dante, after Raffaello. Profile portrait of Dante on the title-page, by G. Amato. Two plates in black and white, sixty-six coloured plates, mounted on strong paper and protected by tissue paper, reproducing the drawings executed by Federico Zuccari for the Commedia; 288 illustrations in black and white or in red, after over hundred Renaissance artists. Editorial binding in leather, blind- and gilt-tooled covers. On the spine and upper cover title lettered in gilt. Marbled pastedowns and flyleaves. Board edges slightly abrased. A very fine copy.

Provenance: Maria Josè von Sachen-Coburg-Gotha, princess of Belgium, and wife of the last Italian king Umberto II Savoia (on the recto of the front flyleaf, with the motto ‘Sicut Alpes Indomita'); Livio Ambrogio collection.

First and fine facsimile edition of the celebrated Dante historiato, the series of eighty-eight drawings executed by the Italian painter Federico Zuccari (1539-1609), from the codex preserved the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi, in Florence. The volume opens with an essay by the art historian Corrado Ricci (1858-1934). The text of the Commedia is accompanied by a rich illustrative apparatus, with over 280 illustrations by the most renowned artists of the Italian Renaissance.