Iconografia dantesca ed elementi paratestuali nell’edizione della Commedia Brescia, Bonino Bonini, 1487

The article examines the edition of the Commedia printed in Brescia in 1487 by Bonino Bonini. This was the first attempt to produce an illustrated edition of the poem after Niccolò di Lorenzo’s aborted edition in 1481. In contrast to the Florentine edition which used the metal engravings of Baccio Baldini, Bonini used woodcuts which were easier to print with the text and succeeded in providing full-page illustrations for all the cantos up the first canto of Paradiso, after which there are no more images. A detailed analysis of the illustrative apparatus is provided in which various artists of widely differing sensibilities and abilities are identified as well as those cases where the woodblocks have been used more than once, so shedding light on the Bonino edition’s connections with the 1481 Florentine precedent as well as the probable influence of Mantegna’s style on the images it includes.