Tag Archives: Divine Comedy

Looking for Dante: Exploring the Divine Comedy in Print from the 15th Century to Today

By Dr Rebeca Bowen (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages)

When we pick up a book, we often forget that as well as reading a text we are looking at an object. Unlike the relative intangibility of words, which dwell in our minds and memories as well as on the page, screen, or writing surface before us, books are things — they have a physical presence in the world and a material history to go along with it. Some books call out to be seen, maximising their visual appeal with images or interesting layouts. This is certainly the case for early printed editions of Dante’s medieval masterwork, the Commedia, which demonstrate innovative visual traditions shaped by the new technologies that (re)produced them. These historical books, many of them experimental in their page layout and decoration, have been the subject of a new artistic-academic collaboration based at the Taylor Institution Library between researchers from the sub-faculty of Italian—Rebecca Bowen and Simon Gilson—and the artist and printmaker Wuon-Gean Ho.

book opening

1564 Sessa (ARCH.FOL.IT.1564 (1–3))

Spanning the first 150 years of printing, from the experiments of the late 1400s to the elaborate designs of the sixteenth century, the Taylorian collection of early printed editions of Dante’s Commedia is astonishing. These books reflect the major developments in publishing fiction in early modern Italy, representing different formats (from monumental folios [ARCH.FOL.IT.1477] to tiny octavos [ARCH.8o.IT.1502] no bigger than the palm of a reader’s hand). They demonstrate different critical approaches to the text (including extensive commentaries [ARCH.FOL.IT.1564], visual apparatuses like maps and diagrams [ARCH.8o.IT.1506], or minimal paratextual notes [101.C.11]). These books also tell stories about the history of the Taylor Institution, from its founding in 1847; through the rare book purchasing policies that operated from the 1870s to the 1890s; and the important donations of the twentieth century, including from Dante scholar and editor of the Commedia, Edward Moore, whose books were placed on indefinite loan to the Taylor Institution by Queen’s College in 1939.

photograph of Wuon-Gean Ho at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press

The artist Wuon-Gean Ho working at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press,
Oxford, March 2024.

Seeking to examine these historical editions in more detail and to explore the meanings they can still hold for us today, the ‘Looking for Dante’ collaboration unfolded through a series of encounters in libraries and archives around Oxford. Artist-printmaker Wuon-Gean Ho, who trained in woodblock printing in Japan and currently works in relief printmaking processes, enjoyed engaging with the craftmanship of these ancient books. She writes: “I was thrilled to turn the crisp pages, to feel the embossed traces of ink on paper. I marvelled at the woodcuts and spent time using drawing as a way of translating the motives behind the creation of the iconography.” Responding to Dante’s poem through this early print tradition, Wuon-Gean developed a unique perspective on the Commedia and its presence in Oxford. The print series, exhibition, and catalogue ‘Looking for Dante: Exploring the Divine Comedy in Print from the 15th Century to Today’ is the result of this knowledge exchange.

linocut

Dante – Bodbib Press (2024) by Wuon-Gean Ho.
Linocut and Monoprint, 15 x 20 cm.

An embodied response to Dante’s poem as well as to the books and libraries that conserve it, Wuon-Gean’s new series of prints immerses us in her experience as a reader. By placing herself in her own images—similar to the way in which Dante places himself as a character in his own poem—Wuon-Gean guides us through a multi-layered, vision of the text. Moving from the imagined spaces of Dante’s poem through the landscapes of the early modern woodblock illustrations into the physical spaces of the Taylor Library and the printshop that still operates today in the Old Bodleian, where Wuon-Gean inked and printed many of the images, the series offers a contemporary reading of Dante’s poem through the historical books that were best-sellers in the first decades of print.

In the above print Bodbib Press (set in the Bodleian historical printshop), the iconic silhouette of the Radcliffe Camera looms through the widow that illuminates Francesco Marcolini’s 1544 edition of Dante’s Commedia, which lies on the bench to the left of the printer at work. The recognisable, circular images in Marcolini’s edition encourage a ‘scientific’ bird’s eye view of the Inferno, recollected in Wuon-Gean’s print through the geometric outlines visible on the pages open in the foreground.

book page

Marcolini, Commedia, 1544 (ARCH.8o.IT.1544 (1))

Reflecting elements of the historical woodcuts, some of the ‘Looking for Dante’ prints transpose key themes from the Commedia into images that question the relevance of Dante’s vision in the context of contemporary life. The print It Spills from the Screen echoes the tangle of limbs in the Marcolini woodcuts but transforms the bird’s eye view into the modern medium of the mobile phone, which becomes a page-like window through which images of human suffering pour out into the world. Bursting with the anguish of modern conflict, this print questions the role of analogue and digital technologies in the dissemination of depictions of distress.

linocut

Dante – It Spills from the Screen (2024) by Wuon-Gean Ho.
Linocut and Monoprint, 20 x 15 cm.

Emerging from the darkness of Inferno, Wuon-Gean’s prints also reflect on the possibility of redemption and personal growth, a powerful red-thread throughout Dante’s otherworldly journey. When Dante reaches the top of the mountain of Purgatory, before he can begin his ascent into Paradise, he encounters the woman he loved on earth, Beatrice, and is forced to go through a process of anagnorisis, or self-examination. Looking down into a stream that divides him from his beloved, Dante cannot bear to gaze at his own reflection:

Li occhi mi cadder giù nel chiaro fonte;
ma veggendomi in esso, i trassi a l’erba,
tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte’

(My gaze fell down to the clear fount, but seeing myself reflected, I wrenched my eyes back to the grassy bank, so much shame heavied my forehead)
Purgatorio 30.76–78

Fractured and re-composed as an encounter between the artist-as-researcher and the object of research (a fantastical semi-self-portrait in the guise of Beatrice—recognisable by the letter ‘B’, which labels the figure left of centre in the lower foreground), the print Seeking Immortality offers an intimate portrayal of intellectual inquiry. Set in the recognisable space of the Taylor Library’s Main Reading Room, this meeting occurs not in the reflection of a stream but through the mirror of the library desk. Mediated by the magnifying glass that she holds to her face, the inquisitive eye of the artist merges with the mind’s eye of the reader as a slippage takes place between the viewer and the book. Through Wuon-Gean’s vision of Dante’s protagonist, we are immersed in the artist’s reflection on the text.

linocut

Dante – Seeking Immortality (2024) by Wuon-Gean Ho.
Linocut and Monoprint, 20 x 15 cm.

Generations of readers have encountered Dante’s poem in the well-lit rooms of the Taylor Institution. For many, their studies will have led them to call up and examine the historical books consulted in this collaboration. From June 14th until July 10th 2024, these books were on display in the Voltaire Room alongside Wuon-Gean’s prints, setting up a conversation between the two sets of works on paper. Reflecting on the show, Wuon-Gean writes that: “perhaps the most striking juxtaposition was between the print Touch In – In Touch and the pages of Francesco Marcolini’s 1544 edition of the Commedia, which was opened to an image of Dante and Virgil from the end of Purgatory, when Dante is embraced by Virgil in anticipation of entering the next chapter. Touch In – In Touch takes this ambiguous gesture of closeness between Dante and Virgil and places them inside an egg-like structure hovering off the surface of the page, commenting on how the past is fragile but tangible”.

The ten prints made for the project have entered the Taylorian collection and can be consulted along with other library materials. They were printed by hand with jet black ink on archival cotton paper using technology that closely resembles that which would have been used in the making of the original books. An exhibition catalogue, which shows all ten prints accompanied with selected texts from the Commedia and commentary from Wuon-Gean and her academic collaborators, Rebecca Bowen and Simon Gilson is available online.

This project was funded by a TORCH Knowledge Exchange Innovation Fund Award. It is part of the AHRC Project ‘Envisioning Dante, c. 1472-c. 1630: Seeing and Reading the Early Printed Page’, led by Professor Guyda Armstrong at the University of Manchester and Professor Simon Gilson at the University of Oxford. The grant holders would like to thank Richard Lawrence and Alexandra Franklin at the Bodleian, and the staff at the Taylor Institution Library, especially Emma Huber, Andrea Del Cornò and Joanne Ferrari.

Seeing Dante’s Commedia in Print from the Renaissance to Today: The Taylorian Collections

Together with the artist and printmaker Wuon Gean-Ho, two researchers from the sub-faculty of Italian, Rebecca Bowen and Simon Gilson, have been exploring the Taylorian collections of Renaissance print editions of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. This blog post highlights key aspects of those collections ahead of an exhibition of new artworks created by Wuon-Gean which will be displayed alongside these historical editions. The exhibition will run in the Voltaire Room from 14th June – 11th July 2024. A catalogue will be available through Taylor Editions.

The Taylor holds an astonishing collection of early print editions of Dante’s Commedia, published before 1600. These books, both beautiful and rare, represent an experimental and exciting era in the development of print as a medium and as a technology. With at least 27 different editions of or about the poem, studying the Taylor’s historical collections of Dante amounts to studying the history of the Commedia in early modern print more broadly. As well as striking illustrations and interesting paratexts, these volumes hold the histories of their former owners and readers, offering a journey that moves from Dante’s Florence, to sixteenth-century Venice, and on to Oxford in the nineteenth-century, as the examples examined in the following paragraphs show.

Title Pages. (Aldus, 1515: MOORE.1.G.1; Giolito, 1555: Moore 1.A.3)

Almost all of the early printed Dante’s in the Taylorian collections were published in Venice. This reflects a very real phenomenon in the early print history of the Commedia as the Venetian city state dominated production. The earliest printed copy of the Commedia in the Taylorian collections was produced by the German craftsman Windelin von Speyer, whose brother, although not himself born a Venetian, was the first printer to be granted a licence to print in the city (ARCH.FOL.IT.1477). This book was produced in 1477 and reflects the fact that print technology was still very experimental at that time. As scholars have noted, the body of the text is interrupted by several blank spaces. Looking back at older manuscripts we can see that, where this printed edition has blank spaces, earlier copies have hand-drawn diagrams. These scientific images did not accompany Dante’s poem but were part of the commentary by Iacomo della Lana, which is printed for the first time in this edition. These blanks remind us of the technological difficulty of reproducing images alongside text in the early era of printing.

Blank space. (Speyer, 1477: ARCH.FOL.IT.1477)

The first fully illustrated edition of the Commedia was also printed in Venice, nearly fifteenth years after the last edition, in 1491. The Taylorian has a copy of this book, published by Bernardo Benali and Matteo Capcasa di Parma (or Codecà), which contains an illustration for every canto of the poem (ARCH.FOL.IT.1491(1)). The Taylorian also has copies of several of the books that were produced after this edition, using the same or similar images and even replicating its setting of the text, including an edition printed by Pietro Quarengi in 1497 also in Venice. Quarengi’s edition uses some of same woodcuts made for Codecà’s earlier book, but also uses another set of blocks made for a rival edition, printed by Pietro di Piasi months after Codecà’s book in 1491 (ARCH.FOL.IT.1497(1)).

 

Inferno 1. (Codecà, 1491: ARCH.FOL.IT.1491(1))

 

Inferno 1. (Quarengi, 1497: ARCH.FOL.IT.1497(1))

Of the 25 editions of the Commedia published before 1600 and held in the Taylorian collections, only 7 were not printed in Venice. Two of these editions were printed in Florence, Dante’s hometown. They both reflect a strand of interest in Dante’s poem that was particularly popular in Florence in the 16th century when publishers and readers of Dante were increasingly excited about exploring the poem as a source of inspiration for scientific and mathematical hypotheses on locating and measuring hell. The earliest of these editions was printed by Filippo Giunta in 1506 and presents Dante’s poem along with a new treatise on the ‘Site, Shape, and Size of Hell’ (101.C.15).

The Taylor’s copy of this edition is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is missing Dante’s poem and only contains the treatise. Secondly, the final 8 leaves of the treatise are also missing and they have been replaced with very careful handwritten replicas, including a diagram that accurately reproduces the image in the print edition on a deliberately yellowed surface. Although this approach to conversation clashes with contemporary practices—now we would understand pages as an important part of the life of the object and not a deficit to be filled—it is common to find very accurate, hand-drawn inclusions of missing parts of text in manuscripts and early printed books.

Hand drawn replacement of missing pages. (Giunta, 1506: 101.C.15)

The second Florentine edition in the Taylorian collections was released by the Manzani printshop in 1595 and edited by the newly founded Accademia della Crusca, a scholarly society still operating today that opened its doors in 1593 (MOORE.1.B1). As well as a detailed map of the Inferno printed with the expensive technique of engraving, this edition offers specialized linguistic notes for readers interested in the poem’s textual variants. The edition is plagued with typographical errors, partly because many Academicians were invited to contribute to its creation.

As well as books printed in Venice and Florence, the Taylorian holds four editions of the Commedia printed in the French city of Lyon. These are evidence of the prolific trade between Northern Italy and South-Eastern France in the early modern period (101.C.2; VET.ITAL.I.A.158; 51.E.6.B; MOORE.1.A.7). These editions present Dante’s text in Italian and include new paratextual materials to help the reader navigate the text. They also experiment with small format publication, beginning with an octavo edition printed in 1502 that is an exact copy of a book first produced by the very popular Venetian printshop of Aldus Manutius (101.C.2); a smaller edition in 12mo which was printed by Jean de Tournes in 1547 (VET.ITAL.I.A.158); and an even smaller 16mo edition printed four different times by Guglielmo Rouillio (the Taylorian edition is from 1552: 51.E.6.B).

Title page, ‘La Divina Comedia di Dante’. (Giolito, 1555: MOORE.1.A.3)

Despite their small size, these editions offer the reader a detailed visual experience that includes woodcut illustrations and the use of ‘page ornaments’ to signal the start of different sections of text. Rather than staying in France, this aesthetic crossed back into Italy and influenced the page design in publications like Gabriele Giolito’s edition printed in Venice in 1555 (Moore 1.A.3). Instead of using the same paratextual materials as the ones printed in Lyon, Giolito’s book presents new summaries and interpretations alongside a new edition of the text produced by the scholar Ludovico Dolce. Dolce was engaged in deeply politicised discussions about Dante’s poem that raged between Venice, Florence, and Rome in the mid sixteenth-century and went so far as to implicate Dante in debates about the religious orthodoxy of his text. Defending Dante in this context, Dolce’s edition is the first to refer to the Commedia as ‘divina’ (divine), highlighting the word through prominent placing and framing at the top of the title page.

Title page. (Aldus, 1515: MOORE.1.G.1)

These small books were very much inspired by an edition esteemed for its elegance and simplicity, produced by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. Although the Taylorian does not hold a copy of the first edition printed by Aldus in 1502, it does hold a copy of the second edition printed by Aldus in 1515 and claimed by the printer with his recognisable dolphin motif.

These collections are available for consultation and for study. As well as being of interest to students of Book History and Italian Studies, they present an opportunity for creative reflection on the history of poetry in print. For further information on the collections related to Dante and, in particular, more modern materials, consult the existing blog posts on images of the poet and audio files as well as the handbook for the 2021 exhibition ‘Illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy’, curated by Gervase Rosser and Claire Hills-Nova.

Far from forgotten fragments in the long print history of Dante’s Commedia, these rare books are testaments to the duration of interest in this medieval poem as an object of study and as a story that transcends national and regional boundaries, offering a poetic geography that to this day invites readers to imagine ‘otherworldly’ spaces in relation to their own worldly experiences.

Some of these books will be on display from 14th June – 11th July 2024 in the Voltaire Room alongside new artworks by Wuon Gean-Ho. This is the result of a TORCH Knowledge Exchange Innovation Fund. You can read more about the project at this link.

Society for Italian Studies’ Biennial Conference

2015-09-SIS_logo_large_printSociety for Italian Studies Biennial Conference

Oxford, Taylor Institution,
25-28 September 2015

Before the rush of new students and returning students, the Taylor Institution opened its doors to 200-plus delegates, over three days, for the Biennial Conference of the Society for Italian Studies, 2015. (Link here to the SIS-Biennial-Conference-Programme.)

2015 has been an auspicious year for big anniversaries in Italian culture, including: 750 years since the birth of Dante Alighieri, 500 since the death of  Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, 30 since Italo Calvino’s death, and 100 since Italy revoked the Triple Alliance (with Germany and Austria-Hungary) and entered World War I on the side of the Triple Entente (France, Great Britain and Russia). We also lie on the eve of the anniversary of the first edition of Ariosto’s epochal epic, the Orlando Furioso. The conference programme, together with the display of items from the Taylor Institution Library’s Special Collections as well as the Sackler Library’s Wind Room, reflected the ongoing cultural impact of these figures and events. (Link here to the SIS-2015-Display-List.)

Throughout 2015, Dante’s 750th birthday has been celebrated by popes and politicians, with readings, concerts and conferences and, thanks in part to the 1939 deposit of the Moore Collection by The Queen’s College with the Taylorian, a number of early print editions of Dante’s Commedia were on view.

Each item shown was intriguing for different reasons, not least for allowing us to focus on the material culture and circulation of Dante’s texts during the transition from manuscript to print. An interest in these questions, the so-called ‘material turn’ in some branches of research, was also evident in a number of SIS conference panels considering the content and afterlives of Dante’s texts.

Striking images from various editions of Dante’s Commedia were on display, such as in a 1507 Venetian edition, which included illustrations based on Botticelli’s treatment of the poem. One Commedia shown (Venice, 1529), bore images of classical poets in parallel with Italy’s Tre Corone, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.

The display of this 1529 edition, with its Tre Corone array, of was of broader relevance in a year which, as well as marking a significant anniversary of Dante’s birth, saw the publication of the new Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, presented in a special ‘unroundtable’ conference session by its editors, Rhiannon Daniels and Guyda Armstrong. This session served not only to present a complex and fascinating author, but also to consider the role of medieval and early modern specialists in the wider scope of Italian and modern language departments, in the humanities, and in the public sphere, picking up discussions in other venues such as the recent International Medieval Congresses at Leeds and Kalamazoo.

Petrarch, Trionfi (Milan: Ioanne Angelo Scinzenzeler, 1512)

Petrarch, Trionfi (Milan: Ioanne Angelo Scinzenzeler, 1512)

Not to be left out, Petrarch will also shortly be receiving his own Companion volume in the Cambridge series, so that the three big guns of the medieval canon will, at last, be equally well-served in terms of introductory criticism. Students of medieval Italian (Oxford Italianists taking Paper VI) have never had it so good!

During his sadly curtailed life-time, Italo Calvino (1923-1985) produced a body of work that remains a staple of undergraduate curricula, of graduate and professional research agendas (turning up in a SIS conference panel on experimental narratives), and (in the original Italian and in translations into numerous languages) of bookshop shelves around the world. In Calvino’s fiction, non-fiction, lectures, screen-plays, essays, and articles exist strands with always at least half an eye on Italian literary and narrative traditions, from fairytales to ‘classics’ of literature. This interest is reflected in Calvino’s edition of his oft-proclaimed favourite text, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, of which a 1555 and 1570 edition were shown. In addition, a vinyl recording curated by Calvino was displayed alongside the first critical edition of the 1516 edition of the text (by Oxford scholar Marco Dorigatti).

The Furioso, its editions and afterlives also had a marked presence in a variety of panels over the course of the SIS conference. The 1570 edition of Ariosto’s text on dislay was of particular interest not so much for what had been included, but for what one reader had attempted to delete.

Lines describing discordant and unseemly behaviour among friars (Canto 27.37) have been struck through in an act of censorious literary disagreement. This somewhat drastic intervention again brings the material fates of the texts we study into sharp relief.

As well as celebrating the lives and works of figures like Dante, Calvino, and Ariosto, recent years have also marked more sombre recollections relating to the beginning of the Great War, declared on 28 July 1914, and joined by Italy, after the collapse of its Triple Alliance with Germany and Austro-Hungary, on 23 May 1915.

While these remembrances have largely focused on loss and sacrifice, the Italian Futurists thought World War I was great in a rather different sense, celebrating warfare as ‘the world’s only hygiene’, to use F.T. Marinetti’s phrase in his Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909). A copy of this text was included among a visually striking display of his works, along with texts by his contemporaries and co-conspirators. (See also the Taylorian’s blog posting Futurism, Fascism and the Art of War.)

Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo (1909)

Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo (1909)

This Manifesto was one of several texts featuring in the final SIS keynote, by Robert Gordon, exploring the developing role of chance and luck in ‘modernist’ Italian works.

Indeed, the exhibition provided a visual counterpart to all three keynotes. Zygmnut Barański’s address ‘On Dante’s Trail’, was very concerned with the use of archival materials in relation to ‘historically inflected research’ on Dante; Lina Bolzoni’s talk focused on the perils and pleasures of reading and the importance of texts by great authors to the construction of the self in early modern Italy; and the aforementioned Futurist and modern publications on show reflected the heart of Robert Gordon’s discussion.

David Bowe, Victoria Maltby Junior Research Fellow, Somerville College,
Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages
Further reading
For items on view, link here to the SIS-2015-Display-List.

See also:

Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels and Stephen J. Milner, eds. The Cambridge companion to Boccaccio (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015)

Zygmunt G. Barański and Martin McLaughlin, eds. Italy’s three crowns: reading Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007)

Rachel Jacoff, ed. The Cambridge companion to Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993)

M. McLaughlin Italo Calvino (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1998)