In 2°, (410 x 300 mm); Vol. I: pages X, (2), 138 with 75 full-page black-and-white woodcuts outside the text; pages VIII, 134, (2) with XLII woodcuts; pages (8), 132, (4) with XVIII woodcuts. It features an introduction to Dante's life and works, a magnificent iconographic complement of 135 full-page woodcuts (as described above, 75 for the Inferno, 42 for the Purgatory, and 18 for the Paradise), and a frontispiece to the first volume with a portrait of Dante; the text is arranged in two columns and is completed by notes "taken from the best ancient and modern interpreters" edited by Eugenio Camerini.Bound in elegant red half-leather with hazelnut and red marbled corners and boards, gilt title on the spine with six raised bands, gilt titles and embellishments. Blind-decorated borders with a Florentine fleur-de-lis along the boards and corners. Embossed edges. The hazelnut and red silk bookmarks are preserved. The 135 woodcuts are all protected by pink, yellow, and white colored tissue paper. First edition illustrated by Gustave Doré (as cited by Mambelli), an extraordinary illustrator born in Strasbourg on January 6, 1832, and died in Paris on January 23, 1883; he is considered one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators of the late nineteenth century. Designed in 1855, the illustrations for the Divine Comedy, in Doré's intention, would inaugurate a series of "literary masterpieces" by the greatest authors (Homer, Byron, Goethe, Racine, Corneille, and so on). The choice to open the series with the Divine Comedy reflects Dante's popularity in mid-nineteenth-century French culture. The black-and-white plates of the Divine Comedy are unanimously considered by critics to be a perfect marriage of Doré's skill and Dante's vivid visual imagination. Writer and friend Théophile Gautier, reviewing the 1861 edition, declared that "no artist could have illustrated Dante better than Doré. In addition to his composite and graphic talent... he possesses the visionary eye the poet speaks of, capable of revealing the secret and singular aspect of nature." Doré initially found no publishers willing to support the production costs of the expensive folio edition he planned: so the artist himself financed the publication of the first book in the series, Inferno, printed in 1861 by Hachette. The Inferno was a resounding success: "starting in the winter of 1860-1861, Gustave Doré invaded the Parisian scene with Dante" (Philippe Kaenel). The print run quickly sold out, and by the following year, European and American publishers were competing to secure the rights. It therefore became natural to consider completing the work with illustrations for the other two canticles of the Divine Comedy: in 1868, Hachette published Purgatory and Paradise, and the complete work was illustrated with 135 plates and a portrait of Dante on the frontispiece. In 1868, the Milanese publisher Edoardo Sonzogno, in the midst of a revitalization of the family publishing business he had acquired seven years earlier, published the first Italian edition of the Divine Comedy illustrated by Gustave Doré. Eugenio Camerini, the editor of the text, drew on Witte's teachings; For the variants, he relied especially on the two edited by the Accademia della Crusca in 1595 and 1837. For the expositions, he took into account the best ancient and modern interpreters: Boccaccio, Buti, Benevento da Imola, Tommaseo, Bianchi, Blanc, etc. A fine, full-margined copy, with excellent, well-printed illustrations, it has some light foxing and marginal browning. The binding shows signs of aging and slight abrasions on the hinges. Mambelli, 362, indicates it as the first with Dorè's illustrations.