DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321) - Le terze rime di Dante. Lo'nferno e'l purgatorio e'l paradiso di Dante Alaghieri. Venice: Aldo Manuzio, 1502.   The celebrated first Aldine edition of 1502 of the Terze Rime, or Dante's Comedy. Second impression with the Aldine anchor on final leaf added only to a limited number of copies. According to Renouard and Gamba this is the very first time in which the renown printer's device is used (Gamba, 379; Renouard, p. 34), while it had in fact already appeared two months earlier in the second volume of the Poetae Christiani (June, 1502). "Prima edizione in formato portatile.. in carattere corsivo dovuto ad Aldo seniore e chiamato italico da quelli d'oltre Alpe e da noi petrarchesco perè appunto servì all'edizione del Canzoniere del Petrarca. L'incisore e fonditore dei caratteri usati dagli Aldi fu Francesco da Bologna" (Mambelli, 17).   Other corrections were included in the course of publication among which the author's name in A1v which is here still incorrectly spelled "Alaghieri". This is the first and only time that Dante's Divine Comedy has been given the title Terze Rime by Pietro Bembo, whose father Bernardo was the owner of the Dante manuscript donated by Boccaccio to Petrarch (today Vat. Lat. 3199). The edition is also important for the textual novelties found both here and in the 1501 Aldine edition of Petrarch, again by Bembo; for example, an apostrophe is used to indicate an elision and the è is accented to indicate the meaning other than e.   8vo (158 x 94mm). (Small repair to the upper inner corner of title, final leaf a little detached, little worm traces in the margin of gathering K without loss of text). Recent vellum with manuscript title on spine.

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