This is the third of Francesco Sansovino's Venetian editions, with the other two published in 1564 and 1578. These Venetian editions were the first to contain the commentaries of both Landino and Vellutello and is therefore one of the earliest scholarly editions of the poem. With the portrait of Dante to the title page.

Edited by Francesco Sansovino, an important humanist and Italian scholar.

Cristoforo Landino was an important figure in the Florentine Renaissance. A Humanist, he supported the use of vernacular Italian. His commentary on the Divine Comedy further championed this viewpoint. Alessandro Vellutello was a Lucchese writer, poet and scholar. He wrote his 'New Explanation' of Dante's 'Comedia' in 1544. It was first published by Francesco Marcolini and was illustrated with eighty-seven drawings. The images were created specifically from Marcolini's commentary. Marcolini's intentions of this commentary were to provide an interpretation of Dante that differed from and was not influenced by previous explanations. He was seen as radical in his views and interestingly his commentary contrasts that of Landino's as he believed in the subordination of the commentator to the text. Prior to Marcolini's commentary, it was Landino's commentary that dominated the field.

Adorned with many in-text woodcuts depicting the circles of hell. The illustrated title page features a vignette of Dante. It is believed that these were created by Giovanni Britto after schematic drawings by Velllutello himself. The images have been hailed for their faithfulness to Dante's original text, and are regarded as 'the most distinctive renditions of the poem after Botticelli's' (Parker, World of Dante). The majority of these illustrations are present to Vellutello's commentary, as they were originally published.

With 101 woodcuts total, including three full page illustrations. Six of the woodcuts are repeated several times (though are surrounded by different text) and therefore there are 93 individual woodcuts.

Being a folio in 8s with the pagination to the recto of each leaf only.

Collated, I7 is provided in facsimile which has been bound in.

'The Divine Comedy' is regarded to be the preeminent work of Italian literature. Its imagination of the afterlife in its three parts, 'Inferno', ' Purgatorio' and 'Paradiso' represents the Medieval world-view of life after death. This classic work also developed the Tuscan language as standardized Italian. It was first published in 1320.

An important critical edition of Dante's influential poem.