Delle opere di Dante Alighieri Tomo I. [II.]... con le Annotazioni del Dottore Anton Maria Biscioni Fiorentino. Venice, Giambattista Pasquali, 1741. [Together with:] Id. La Comedia di Dante Alighieri tratta da quella, Che pubblicarono gli Accademici della Crusca l’Anno MDXCV Col Comento del M. R. P. Pompeo Venturi della Compagnia di Gesù. Divisa in tre Tomi.

Five volumes (175 x 116 mm). I-II voll.: [4], 286; [4], 299, [1] pages. Woodcut printer's device on the title-pages. III.-V voll.:. xl, 317, [3]; 342, [2]; 375, [1] pages. Illustrated with a two engravings showing respectively the portrait of Dante, after a painting by Bernardino India, at the time belonged to the count Daniele Lisca from Verona, and the Pianta, e misure dell'Inferno di Dante, based on Antonio Manetti's iconographical diagram. Woodcut head- and tailpieces. Uniformly bound in early eighteenth-century vellum. Smooth spines, title and volume numbering on dark red morocco lettering-pieces. Edges speckled red. Covers slightly stained, minor losses to the extremities of the spines. A very good copy, some leaves browned, a few finger-marks. A pale waterstain to the lower blank margine of some quires in the third volume of the Commedia. In the first volume, on the recto of the front flyleaf, cutting from a journal, referring to a new Dante manuscript (Un nuovo codice dantesco'), discovered by Guido Biagi and Giuseppe L. Passerini in the State Archives in Florence.

Provenance: Anna Maria Riddell (1791-1859; ownership inscription in each volume, on the verso of the front flyleaves, or on the recto of the half-title); his nephew Arthur Walker (ownership inscription ‘Arthur Walker Sept. 1^st 1841' in the first and second volume); Livio Ambrogio collection.

Five-volume set assembled by an early owner – in all likelihood Anna Maria Riddell (1791-1859) - which represents an attempt to create a ‘virtual edition' of Dante's complete works. The first two volumes contain the first edition of Dante's minor works (Convivio, Epistola ad Arrigo VII, Vita nuova, Rime and De vulgari eloquentia, supplemented with the Italian translation by Gian Giorgio Trissino, published for the first time in 1529), with the notes by the Florentine scholar Antonio Maria Biscioni; the following three volumes include the reprint of the Commedia, first published by the Venetian printer Giambattista Pasquali in 1739, and accompanied by Pompeo Venturi's commentary. The text of Dante's poem is introduced by the Vita di Dante composed in 1436 by the Florentine chancellor Leonardo Bruni.