Canto 22 of Dante’s Paradiso begins in the heaven of Saturn, a god associated with the Golden Age and a return to the rule of Justice. The illustrator of this early edition employed a technique known as continuous narrative: the pilgrim is represented twice in one image. He appears near Saint Benedict, surrounded by the contemplatives at the base of a golden ladder, and stands alone with Beatrice following his ascent to the sphere of the fixed stars. From atop the ladder, the pilgrim turns his gaze downward. Seeing through his past self and the layers of heavenly spheres, he beholds for the first time the humble earth—“the little threshing floor,” as he calls it, “that so incites our savagery.”
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), La comedia di Dante Aligieri, con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellutello (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1544). Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1909. PML 16104.