La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri Con varie Annotazioni, e copiosi Rami adornata... Venice, Antonio Zatta, 1757. [Together with:] Id. Prose, e rime liriche edite, ed inedite di Dante Alighieri con copiose ed erudite aggiunte, Siccome dalla premessa Prefazione apparisce. Tomo quarto. Parte prima [- seconda].

Five parts in five volumes, large 4° (278 x 209 mm).

Vol. 1: [16], XLVIII, CCCCVIII pages. Title-page printed in red and black with at the center an engraved allegorical vignette. With forty-one full-page plates, at the beginning of each Canto, engraved by Giuliano Giampiccoli, Antonio Zuliani and Giacomo Leonardis after drawings by Francesco Fontebasso, Gaetano Zompini, Michele Schiavone, Filippo Rizzo, Bartolomeo Crivellari, Gaspare Diziani and Giovanni Magnini, which depicts: Dante's embassy to the Doge; portrait of Elizaveta Petrovna, empress of Russia; dedication poem by Zatta to the empress; series of medals with Dante's portrait from the collection of Count Gianmaria Mazzucchelli from Brescia; medallion portrait of Dante; Dante's grave in Ravenna; thirty-four plates,; Profilo, pianta, e misure dell'Inferno di Dante secondo lo schema di Antonio Manetti. At the beginning of each Canto is the the engraved Argument whitin an elaborated frame.
Vol. 2: CCCCXIII, [3] pages. With thirty-three engraved plates at the opening of each Canto.
Vol. 3: CCCCLII, [8], 103, [1] pages. With thirty-three engraved plates at the opening of each Canto.
Vol. 4: XII, 408 pages. With four engraved plates.
Vol. 5: [4], 264, LXXXIV pages. With one folded engraved table (400 x 266 mm) containing Dante's family tree and three engraved plates.

Provenance: Livio Ambrogio collection.

A monumental achievement and, even though preceded by Pasquali's least ambitious edition of 1741, the true first edition of Dante's collected works. Sumptuously printed, it is illustrated with 114 full-page plates. The first three volumes with the Commedia were printed in 1757; the fourth, devided into two parts and including, among other minor things, the Vita nuova, the Convivio, the De vulgari eloquentia in the original Latin version and in the Italian translation by Gian Giorgio Trissino, the Rime and the De Monarchia, was issued in 1758. The text of the Commedia is based on that of the 1727 Comino edition and is accompanied by the commentaries and annotations of some of the best Dante scholars of the time such as Pompeo Venturi, Giovanni Antonio Volpi, Filippo Rosa Morando and Gian Lorenzo Berti.
The edition is dedicated by Count Cristoforo de Cisneros, who had already sponsored the 1756 Zatta edition of Petrarch's Canzoniere, to the empress of Russia, Elizaveta Petrovna (1709-1762), the daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I.
This is also the first illustrated edition of the Commedia after the edition of 1596, which reproduce the so-called Nasone portrait of Dante and the illustrations of the Marcolini edition.