"In September 1820, the lawyer Luigi Fantoni, descendant of the dynasty of the famous sculptors of Rovetta, printed an edition of the Divine Comedy in the printing press set up in his ancestors' house. On the advice of his father, aware of the decline of the family profession, Luigi obtained a degree in law and practiced law for a short time. A passionate bibliophile, he cultivated literary, philosophical and historical-artistic studies. During a stay in Paris (1811-1814) he found, among the precious manuscripts and printed copies from the French spoliations in Italy, a manuscript of the Divine Comedy, known as Vatican 3199; the codex, confiscated by the French in 1797 and transferred to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, was recovered in October 1815 and returned by the Parisian library to the Vatican Apostolic Library. It is a parchment codex of 3+80 leaves, written and decorated with initials in the years 1351-1353, which tradition says is in the autograph hand of Giovanni Boccaccio and annotated by Francesco Petrarca. The authenticity of the autograph was questioned already during the nineteenth century and today it is believed that the codex is not by Boccaccio's hand, but rather the antigraph of two (Toledano 104.6 and Riccardiano 1035) of the three autograph manuscripts of the writer from Certaldo which contain the Comedy.
Fantoni diligently transcribed the codex and, having returned to Rovetta, after a few years he matured the decision to have it printed. With the purchase of two presses (one for the types and the other for the copperplates) and the sending of typographic characters from Padua, he set up a real printing house in his own home with the help of a printer and some apprentices. Three volumes came out of his types in 1820, one for each canticle, printed in octavo and quarto, with subsequent editions that were little different in typographical design and materials." (Civic Library Angelo Mai of Bergamo, online )