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Books, Autographs & Prints

Tuesday 11 November 2025 e Wednesday 12 November 2025, 03:00 PM • Rome

7

Alighieri, Dante

(Firenze 1265 - Ravenna 1321)

Dante's terza rime, 1502

Estimate

€ 3.000 - 5.000

Sold

€ 6.450

The price includes buyer's premium

Information

[Lyon, Baldassarre Gabbiano, after 1502]. 8°. 163 x 100 mm. Bound in full brown shagreen with gilt decorations on the covers and spine, gilt and embossed edges, delicate restorations on the last leaf.

Specialist Notes

THE FAMOUS LYON COUNTERFEIT OF ALDO'S DANTE.
"The success of these editions [Aldo's Dante and Petrarca] was immediate and their print run literally sold out. In fact, to Aldo's official print run, we must add the pirated copies that were printed in Lyon by Baldassarre Da Gabiano , an Italian immigrant originally from Asti. He received the books to be counterfeited from his uncle Giovanni Bartolomeo, an active Venetian bookseller, particularly attentive to the innovative typographical results achieved by Aldo. The Da Gabianos' publishing project consisted in distributing on the particularly receptive Lyon market, editions that were in every way similar to the Aldine ones, that is, the same format and typefaces and the same text: they reproduce, page for page, the Venetian editions, even if "the texts are, in general, mediocre, less accurate than the originals; the typeface is tight but has few ligatures and is therefore more airy and more readable than the Aldine one; the hatching in the shafts presents characteristics of the lettre bâtarde” (...) Even the counterfeit editions quickly sold out and had to be reprinted several times, even more quickly than the originals."
Carlo Pulsoni https://www.insulaeuropea.eu/wpcontent/uploads/2017/11/i_classici_italiani_di_aldo_manuzio.pdf  
A. Tinto, Italics in Sixteenth-Century Typography, Milan 1972, pp. 31-32.
Paradoxically, it can be said that the Lyon counterfeit of Aldo's Terze Rime is much rarer than the original, with only a few copies having appeared on the market in the recent past.

J. Baudrier, Bibliographie Lyonnaise , vol. 7, p. 11-12

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