In 15th-century Italy, book printing was linked to a system of trade fairs bringing together businesspeople from across Europe, in turn influencing the publishing choices of early Italian printers. A case in point is the newly rediscovered copy of a first printed edition (editio princeps) of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (Foligno, 1472), which seems linked to the important Annunciation Fair of Foligno.
Join Natale Vacalebre, Benjamin Franklin Fellow in Italian Studies and expert in written culture, for this talk in which he explores the commercial history and dissemination of the Foligno first edition, currently held in Cornell University’s Kroch Library. Its pages preserve the only existing annotations and margin drawings of the complete 14th-century commentary by Neapolitan scholar Guglielmo Maramauro, opening a unique portal into the Renaissance reader’s understanding of Dante and his writing.
This is the second talk in Cornell’s “Visions of Dante” Study Day, a day-long special event held in conjunction with the Johnson Museum of Art’s “Visions of Dante” exhibition, timed to mark the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. The Foligno edition is on display as part of the exhibit.
Agenda
9:30-10:30 AM ET:
Visualizing Dante in the 16th Century: An Amateur’s Art (Rhoda Eitel-Porter)
10:45-11:45 AM ET:
From Etruria to the New World: Cornell’s Copy of the Editio Princeps of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Between Book History, Bibliophilia, and Exegesis (Natale Vacalebre)
1:00-1:45 PM ET:
Exhibition Tour (curators Laurent Ferri and Andrew Weislogel)
2:00-3:00 PM ET:
Meeting Dante (artist Sandow Birk)
3:15-4:15 PM ET:
A Dante Afterlife: LeRoi Jones’s “System of Dante’s Hell” and Derek Walcott’s “Omeros” (Maryemma Graham)
