A single incunable leaf from the 1477 edition of La Commedia by Dante Alighieri

ALIGHIERI, Dante (1265-1321). La Commedia. Single Incunable Leaf from the 1477 Venice Edition, with Commentary by Jacopo della Lana. Venice: Vindelinus de Spira, 1477.
 
Original incunable leaf, 230 x 330 mm, printed recto and verso in Gothic type in two columns, 48 lines, with printed signature i4. Initials supplied by hand in red and blue. Some light age toning and minor marks, with a little wear to the extreme edges, but a well-preserved, broad-margined leaf. Very Good.
 
A leaf from the 1477 Venetian edition of Dante's Commedia, printed by Vindelinus de Spira, one of the pioneering printers of Venice. Edited by Cristoforo Berardi of Pesaro, the edition was the first to print Dante accompanied by the extensive commentary of the fourteenth-century commentator Jacopo della Lana, and also the first to include Giovanni Boccaccio's Vita di Dante. 
 
This is leaf i4 from the Inferno, corresponding to the passage surrounding Canto XXVI and the episode of Ulysses, with della Lana's commentary surrounding and explaining Dante's text. The red and blue initials have been supplied by hand after printing.
 
Vindelinus de Spira, or Wendelin of Speyer, was among the earliest printers active in Venice. The colophon to this edition explicitly names him as printer and dates the work 1477. The 1477 Commedia is particularly significant in the history of Dante in print, establishing the combination of text, commentary and biographical material.