The following article was originally published as an article on the Textual Studies website by Nikita Willeford Kastrinos. The Department of French & Italian Studies is home to the Textual Studies Program (TXTDS). In this program, students can explore how texts — from scrolls, manuscripts, and printed books to archival documents, digital texts, and textual data — have been written, published, read, circulated, and archived from antiquity to today. Courses include hands-on work with historical texts, archival sources, and contemporary artists’ books, as well as with methods for editing, digitizing, exhibiting, and publishing texts. Students also gain experience building and analyzing text-oriented databases and archives. For more information on this program and the undergraduate minor or graduate certificate, see the Textual Studies Program website, reach out to text@uw.edu, or talk to your advisor!
Beatrice Arduini and Julie Tanaka on New Illustrated 1544 Dante Comedia Acquisition
This week on the blog, we’re detailing a recent Special Collections acquisition! Adding to the breadth and depth of UW Libraries’ rare books holdings, UW Special Collections has purchased a new item to add to its inventory of Italian works—a 1544 edition of Dante Alighieri’s “Comedia,” or the Divine Comedy. We talked with Beatrice Arduini, Associate Professor of Italian, and Julie Tanaka, Associate Dean of University Libraries for Distinctive Collections, to find out more about this volume’s place in UW’s Special Collections and in the publication history of this famous author. Read on to learn about this newly acquired rare work!
16th Century Illustrated Edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy
One of the things that makes this Dante volume special is the illustrations that accompany the commentary. Housing 87 total woodcuts, this 1544 edition features Alessandro Vellutello’s commentary with an accompanying suite of pictures that speak to his interpretation of Dante’s text. This marks a significant moment in the printed history of Dante’s “Comedia” for the way in which its woodcuts are supposed to be read in concert with the text and, in particular, are intended to enhance the reader’s comprehension. For example, consider this illustration of Paradiso cando 18:
“In Paradiso canto 18, Dante sees the words, DILIGITE IUSTITIAM QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM” — “Love justice you who rule the earth” (vv. 91-93) spelled out one letter at the time, and then the blessed souls move into the shape of an eagle. However, in the illustration, we see four different letters and the eagle compressed in the same image, as if the letters and the figure were formed at the same time, although for most of the illustrations the artist preferred to adhere more strictly to the narrative development of the text, as Matthew Collins pointed out in his recent The Early Printed Illustrations of Dante’s Commedia (University of Notre Dame Press, 2024).”
– Beatrice Arduini
In the end, Alessandro Vellutello’s commentary did not become a huge success, never being printed in this format again, however his involvement in the design of these woodcuts remains noteworthy. Setting his project apart from previous illustrated editions of Dante’s work, the emphasis of Vellutello’s interpretive aim makes its woodcuts historically unique.
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in which an image is carved into a block of wood that is then used to impress an image onto the surface of a page by means of ink and pressure. Featuring 87 total woodcuts, La Comedia di Dante Aligieri con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellutello, represents an important moment in the print history of Dante’s Divine Comedy and in the development of the scholarly treatment of this Italian writer.
Text and Image in Alessandro Vellutello’s La Comedia di Dante Aligieri
Vellutello’s illustrations were meant to not only reflect the commentary’s aims but help convey them in a non-linguistic manner, adding to the illustration of the text of the poem. This feature is especially important for the way the woodcuts function from a topographic and narrative perspective. This “hybrid” nature of the 1544 illustrations is, ultimately, the most significant feature of Vellutello’s project.
According to Beatrice Arduini, one of the most notable places Vellutello’s blending of text and image comes into play is in the interpretation of the topography of Dante’s inferno and in the illustration of the content of multiple cantos compressed into one woodcut. For example, the Inferno 25 illustration, pictured below, compresses elements of three/four cantos (the latter part of Inferno 24 and cantos 25-27) and two groups of sinners, the thieves of the seventh bolgia, and the fraudulent counselors of the eighth bolgia, or subcircle of circle 8:
“A unique quality of the Marcolini edition is the bird’s-eye view or aerial perspective and the circular design of the Inferno illustrations. Another unprecedented choice is that the content of numerous cantos is in a few cases compressed into one woodcut, something unique in the printed illustrated tradition of the poem. The total number of the illustrations is, in fact, 87, and not 100, as the Comedia’s cantos.”
– Beatrice Arduini
Though scholars are certain of Vellutello’s personal investment in the conceptualization of the woodcut designs, the artist who actually carved the woodcuts remains unknown. However, some have suggested the name of Giovanni Britto. What is certain is that the woodcut’s appearance in this volume would go on to inspire a tradition of reprintings, later combined not only with Vellutello’s commentary but also Cristoforo Landino’s, first printed in 1481, in 1564, 1578, and 1596.
“The illustrations are closely related to Vellutello’s commentary, an innovation in the printed illustrated editions of the poem, and strive to explain accurately the literal meaning of the text, just like Vellutello tries to do in his glosses. Examples can be found in images like these, where Vellutello graphically represents an explanation of the three angles (left image). They can also be seen in the woodcut where Vellutello provides a measurement line and explains in the commentary that readers are supposed to multiply it by 6 to visualize the unit of length, “braccia,” which he is using for his calculations (right image).”
– Beatrice Arduini
1544 Dante Edition Adds to UW Special Collections Rare Italian Books
According to Julie Tanaka, this 1544 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy is exciting because it is not one of the Dante editions most widely known. In this case, the draw of the volume is the way it presents an opportunity for scholars of Dante and those working on the history of the ‘Comedia’’s illustrations to view an artifact which changed the way illustration, text, and commentary spoke to one another.
“The images in the 1544 Dante make this a significant edition. Vellutello has radically altered our understanding of hell’s landscape, describing its exact location, size, and shape. Coupled with Dante’s text and Vellutello’s commentary, the images allow readers to visualize all aspects of the descent through the nine circles of hell like travelling down a funnel.”
– Julie Tanaka
Vellutello provides the diameter and depth of each circle.
This 1544 Dante edition also has the opportunity to become an important object to the study and instruction of the history of the book, as well as in the technical and art history of printed illustration. In fact, while the Liber Cronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle; 1496) was the first relatively successful integration of text and image in printed books in Europe, the Vellutello’s 1544 “Comedia” images set a new president for the way in which image and text related, making it an important specimen in the history of text illustration. As such, the volume is a valuable addition to Special Collections holdings for the way it offers opportunities for teaching about the historical evolution and function of textual illustration, as well as for teaching about early printed works, early modern binding practices, and developments in the history of woodcut.
“This edition provides so many opportunities for teaching and learning. For people interested in printing history and practices, the volume shows the addition of hand-stamped lines in the lower margin to correct the omission of lines 64-66 in Canto II of Purgatory (II.64-66, leaf V7 recto) in the original publication. The illustrations invite study for both studio art and art history students; the physical object invites textual studies students to examine paper, threads, leathers, and binding practices. Students of history can examine the role historical context played in Vellutello’s commentary in contrast to earlier commentaries. This work invites students of mathematics and engineering to study the structure of Hell. These are just a few of the possibilities.”
Julie Tanaka
Textual Studies Courses in the History of the Book and Special Collections
The UW Textual Studies Program has a long history of collaborations with the UW Libraries and UW Special Collections in particular. Many of our courses utilize their holdings and feature visits to the Special Collections classroom for hands-on instruction. If you’ve ever wanted to explore the rare books and materials housed in the UW Libraries, check out TXTDS courses.
Stills from materials consulted during TXTDS 402 Book Arts: Proseminar in Special Collections, Bibliography, and Letterpress Printing from its first iteration in Fall 2023.
This spring, TXTDS 402 Book Arts: Proseminar in Special Collections, Bibliography, and Letterpress Printing will allow a small group of students interested in material books studies an opportunity to work in close quarters with all the UW Special Collections has to offer. Bringing together various faculty working in different periods, language traditions, and geographies, this course puts students in direct contact with rare and archival materials from the UW Libraries’ collections. Covering histories of the book, reading, and the technological process of printing, the proseminar’s sessions bring experts in various printed cultures together to create a crash course in the production, handling, evaluation, and study of these historical materials.
Additionally, students in this class, which runs once a year as part of the Textual Studies Program course offerings, will get hands-on instruction in printing techniques, including letterpress printing with the help of Seattle-based letterpress printing nonprofit, Partners in Print.
UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies Spring Printmaking Social Hour: Bookplates and Bookmarks
Want to try your own hand at printmaking and relief illustration? Stop by our spring quarter event, hosted in conjunction with UW Global Literary Studies–the upcoming Printmaking Social Hour: Bookplates and Bookmarks. After a successful Printmaking Social Hour in fall quarter, we’re bringing the presses out again to design, carve, and print linocut bookplates and bookmarks! A bookplate, also known as an ex libris, is a mark of book ownership that can be printed or pasted into a volume. For this session, we encourage you to BYOB—bring your own books, that is—so you can print your own personalized ex libris into its pages. You can also design a personalized printed bookmark or anything else you can dream up!
Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 24! The event will take place from 3-5pm in the Husky Union Building, room 332!
You can find out more about this and other upcoming events, Textual Studies courses, the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, or the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies by contacting us at text@uw.edu.
Be sure to also sign up for the TXTDS mailing list to keep up to date on all things TXTDS! And don’t forget to follow us on X and Instagram!