Read a lot of great Renaissance books today but my FAVE is this 1480s first edition divine comedy with extensive academic commentary with painted gold leaf illuminations and engravings from drawings by Botticelli! He didn't illustrate the entire thing but it is the first recorded attempt of a master painter moving into printed books as a media. I've never read it in the original Italian and was SO delighted to hear the flow....
+ this gorgeous book is also HUGE ft. my friends hand lol. Fine rag paper can be so much larger than vellum can be stretched, and it was a little cheaper even though it still looks good centuries later. With no budget to a handwriter or a vellum producer, every other page could have paintings and inlaid engraving prints like these. unfortunately, this one is incomplete. This book is mostly just hundreds of pages of text and analysis of the comedy by a very early scholar. The patron either died, lost interest, or ran out of money.
