Attributed to Alessandro Vellutello

The first illustrated printed edition of Dante’s Divine Commedy, with illustrations related to designs by Botticelli, appeared in 1481, and later Federico Zuccaro and Stradanus would produce important depictions of the story later in the sixteenth century. The present set of drawings, by an artist of more modest talents, has recently been published by Rhoda Eitel-Porter (2019), who proposes that they were drawn by the Dante commentator Alessandro Vellutello (b. 1473) in connection with the publication of his La Comedia di Dante (published by Francesco Marcolini in Venice, 1544; the woodcuts were reused in the Sessa editions of 1578 and 1596). Earlier commentators on the publication had suggested that Vellutello supplied drawings of some type the artist responsible for the printed woodcuts, who was probably Giovanni Britto, and Eitel-Porter makes the compelling case that these are those drawings.