Rambaldi (Benvenuto, da Imola) Commentary to Dante's Commedia, fragment on vellum, ?Northern Italy, late fourteenth century.
320 x 245mm. (fol. 1) and 325 x 230mm. (fols. 2 and 3), three loose leaves, folded and re-used as binding cover for a book in quarto format, text block: ca. 212 x 63mm., two columns, 43-44 lines, first top line, probably blind-ruled, text written in brown ink in pre-humanistic Gothic miniscule hand, Incipit of commentary marked in red ink, with extension, the verses from the Commedia underlined in red, modern pencil foliation in upper right corner, a few small holes, affecting some letters of text, margins rather frayed, especially fol. 1, central lines of text on fol. 1v erased, owing to its re-use as a binding, but legible under UV lamp, further traces of its re-use as binding cover can be seen in the sewings preserved on fol. 2, and in note '1603-1627' written on fol. 1v, inner margin of same leaf with inscription 'Liber primus testamentor[um] p[er] me Her[culem] rogator[um] et rogandor[um], and 'C[arte] 97 con i tre testament[i]' written in the same early hand, fol. 3v with early inked note 'Carte 121 suo iudice', preserved in modern limp vellum folder with ties
⁂ A significant fragment from the Commento to the Commedia by Benvenuto da Imola, one of the most authoritative Dante exegetes from the late fourteenth century. The definitive version of this Latin commentary was composed between 1379 and 1383 and had a wide manuscript circulation in Northern Italy, especially in Bologna, Ferrara, and Mantua. It was first published in 1481, in the Florentine Commedia edited by Cristoforo Landino. The fragment contains Benvenuto's commentary to Paradiso Canto IV, 83-133, and Paradiso Canto X, 5-76.
Provenance: Bernard M. Rosenthal's collection.