The manuscript originally included 115 miniatures, showing Dante’s journey through Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil.

Zaccheroni clearly extracted more than the 21 leaves today in Imola: an inscription on the back of the frame of the present fragment, signed by Giuseppe Melini II, mentions in fact that it was a present of his friend Zaccheroni of Marseille. In 1887 de Flotte's heirs sold the main part of the parent volume to the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, where it remains (ms.ital.2017). Zaccheroni extracted a number of pages, however: in 1865 he returned to his hometown, Imola, and in 1866 he presented to the town library a copy of his edition, into which he had bound 21 of the original manuscript's leaves bearing 13 miniatures (now Imola, MS 76). He then commissioned Giuseppe Zaccheroni (1800-76), who was in France having been exiled from Italy, to edit the text, which was published in 1838 ( Lo Inferno della Commedia di Dante Alighieri … da due Manoscritti inediti). In 1835 it was discovered by the scholar Gaston de Flotte (1805-82) in the attic of an old castle on the banks of the Dordogne, where it had been used by the chatelaine as a weight to press the laundry he bought it and took it to Marseille.

It then passed by descent to Antoine de Cardaillac Caracciolo, and his heirs, as recorded in a note in the parent volume. It then may have passed to the royal library of King Louis XII of France (d.1515), who in turn may have presented it to Giovanni Caraccioli, Duke of Melfi (d.1550) as a reward for services to the crown. The parent manuscript was in the famous Visconti-Sforza library at Pavia until at least 1469.

It comes from a richly illuminated manuscript that includes the coat of arms of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan. This tiny fragment is exceptional in several respects, notably for the text, the artist and the provenance. Pope-Hennessy, Learning to Look, 1991, pp.316-17), and loaned by him to the important exhibition Arte in Lombardia tra Gotico e Rinascimento, Milan, 1988, no.17. A FINE ILLUMINATION FROM DANTE'S INFERNO, THE PRESENTATION COPY OF GUINIFORTE BARZIZZA'S COMMENTARY FOR FILLIPPO MARIA VISCONTI, BY THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUMįrom the collection of SIR JOHN POPE-HENNESSY (1913-94), Director successively of the Victoria & Albert and British Museums, London, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, connoisseur, and authority on the Italian Renaissance bought from Scharf, London, in 1947 (as recorded in J.

Dante medieval illuminations