the journey of the mind to knowledge
the exploration of the bright and the
dark sides of the human nature
the longing for home of the exile
welcome to the british library today
we'd like to take you on a tour of our
dante collections born in 1265 in
florence italy dante alighieri poet
politician and philosopher
was exiled in 1302 and lived a wandering
existence through italy until he settled
in ravenna where he died in 1321 700
years ago
his main work is the divine comedy
his account of a journey through the
three realms of hell purgatory and
heaven dante is considered national poet
in italy but is much more than that
the earliest manuscripts of the divine
comedy appear almost immediately after
dante completed the poem in 1320
there are hundreds of copies that
survive from the 14th and 15th centuries
and they're often decorated and
sometimes extremely extensively
here i have in front of me one of the
earliest dante manuscripts in our
collection it was made in north east
italy in around 1340 so only a couple of
decades after the poem was completed
it contains 261 small miniatures
depicting events from the text
before the invention of the printing
press in the 15th century all books were
written and decorated entirely by hand
this meant that they were extremely rare
and valuable despite this there was a
huge manuscript tradition of copies of
dante's divine comedy
in this miniature you can see dante and
virgil in the second circle of hell
witnessing the whirlwind of the lustful
on the left you can see dante and virgil
and on the right you can see the
whirlwind of lovers which includes paolo
and francesca
another good example is this miniature
in which we can see virgil and dante
witnessing the treacherous imprisoned in
a lake of ice
one of the reasons for the popularity of
the divine comedy is because it was
written in italian rather than latin
which was the language that a lot of
literature was written in at the time
this meant that a lot more people could
read it
this manuscript was made in naples in
around 1370
and it's an example of southern italian
style art
the pictures are all in the lower
margins of the pages they're coloured in
a distinctive colour wash style
so here is dante and virgil
and they're seeing satan who's devouring
his victims and at the bottom we've got
the lake of frozen souls and these are
all people who betrayed their
benefactors
most of the medieval copies were
commissioned by wealthy educated
families and created in workshops by
professional craftsmen
this is one of the finest dante
manuscripts ever made it was probably
made in siena in tuscany in around the
1440s and it may have been made for
alfonso v king of aragon
naples and sicily
in the paradiso dante is guided through
heaven by beatrice who's his ideal woman
on this page we can see beatrice
explaining to dante about the solar
system
eventually dante reaches the empyrion
which is the highest heaven where god
resides
and there he has a vision of a
huge celestial rose which is inhabited
by all the souls in heaven
these medieval manuscripts with their
sumptuous cycles of illustration were an
enormous influence on the early printed
editions
[Music]
the british library has one of the
greatest collections of printed dante
editions in the world ranging from the
15th century when printing was first
introduced into italy right up into the
18th century and beyond
the collections of 15th and 16th century
books are almost complete you can trace
the journey of the text over the various
editions from the 15th to the 18th
century
and also the other elements which were
added to help readers elements like
illustrations
notes
commentaries and diagrams what i'm
looking at here is our copy of the very
first printed edition in italy in 1472
just eight years after the new
technology of printing
was introduced into italy
it doesn't really have a title page
it begins with the text
but
it tells you
that it's starting it says the comedy of
dante alighieri of florence
is begins here and so it does and then
it just continues there are no
illustrations
and and there's no commentary
scribe would would tell you that he'd
finished writing the manuscript at the
end and printers did exactly the same
the amusing thing here
is that the printer gives his name he
gives the date
and he tells you where he printed it but
he's copied the rhyming scheme of the
poem itself
as i say he names himself
yo
johann neumeister john neumeister a
german name
and that was very characteristic of
early printing in italy the first
printers in italy were almost all
germans who brought the new technology
into italy
so the copy here is the first great
illustrated edition of dante's work it
was published in florence in 1481 and it
was designed to be monumental
florence uh got a leading scholar to
write a commentary on the poem
explaining the poem for readers
and they also got illustrations which
were based on drawings by no less an
artist than sandro botticelli
you can see around the text landino's
very long commentary
and there's an illustration right at the
bottom of a page
showing dante in the dark wood where he
finds himself right at the beginning of
the poem
the british library dante collections
don't only include editions of the poem
in the original italian
but also many different translations in
over 40 different languages ranging from
16th century translations right up to
the present day
one of the most interesting translations
is the first complete english
translation done at the beginning of the
19th century kerry's translation sparked
interest in england in dante's poem for
the first time particularly among
romantic poets and artists and we're
very fortunate in having a copy which
belonged to one of the great romantic
poets of the time samuel taylor
coleridge annotated by him it's
interestingly not called the divine
comedy it's called just the vision or
hell purgatory and paradise and here we
have
coleridge's notes
on the first canto to paradiso in which
he also remarks on the
excellence of carey's translation
and how few people will appreciate the
excellence of the translation
because of his choice to use the italian
language in his work and because of his
hopes for an italian unification
with rome as its center dante has been
considered the prophet of italian
unification
his extraordinary ability to paint with
words has inspired artists around the
world to visualize his verses
from the illuminated manuscripts to
renaissance artists such as botticelli
from william blake to gustav dore the
pre-raphaelites salvador dali robert
rauschenberg japanese mangas
for 700 years
artists have been inspired by the same
work in different ways let's view some
of these works together in 1900 renowned
publisher alinari gave young artists the
opportunity to participate in a
competition to illustrate dante's work
the outcome is this edition that i have
in front of me this image from inferno
by duilio cambellotti
describes a scene where the heretics
have been punished it's in the liberty
style
and the second one is from alberto
martini an artist very young
who critics said
was born to illustrate dante because
of this almost symbolised taste
very inspired by artists such as odilon
redon and aubrey beardsley
when the italian government asked the
spanish artist salvador dali on the
occasion of the 700th anniversary of
dante's birth to produce a hundred
watercolors to illustrate the comedy the
spanish painter seemed a strange choice
a spanish surrealist who himself had
rejected religion
the italian government eventually
canceled this project but the lee
continued producing his drawings
which came out in 1964 and there's a
dish that i would like to show you
so here already from the first canto you
can see dali's iconic style describing
the first entering scene of the divine
comedy with dante approaching the dark
woods where he gets lost in the middle
of his life so we have here the first
line
nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
in the middle of my life i find myself
lost in a dark wood
[Music]
i hope you've enjoyed our short tour
there's a lot more in our collections
our work at the british library is to
preserve these treasures for future
generations and to continue acquiring
more in english in italian and in many
other languages
if you'd like to find out more about our
dante collections why don't you search
our online catalogue view our digitized
manuscripts or come to our reading rooms