FLAXMAN, JOHN. 1755-1826.
La Divina Comedia di Dante Alighieri ... disegnata da Giovanni Flaxman.... London: Thomas Hope, 1793 (but 1803 or later).
La Divina Comedia di Dante Alighieri ... disegnata da Giovanni Flaxman.... London: Thomas Hope, 1793 (but 1803 or later).
Oblong 4to (325 x 222 mm). Engraved title page and 110 plates. Contemporary calf gilt rebacked in morocco, edges gilt. Corners bumped, some chipping to covers, foxing and marginal browning throughout.
Provenance: Mary S. Collins (bookplate); gift inscription in ink on front blank: "To William Harness, from his affte. friend H.P. Hope" (Henry Philip Hope, 1774-1839, the publisher's brother).
Flaxman was best known as a sculptor, having entered the Royal Academy as a student at 15, and later working at Wedgewood designing reliefs for their neo-classical ceramics. He went to Rome in 1787 to study classical art, where he met Anglo-Dutch banker and patron of the arts Thomas Hope. Hope commissioned Flaxman to prepare these line drawings for Dante's La Divina Commedia in 1793. The plates were engraved by Tommaso Piroli. The present volume is a later issue, with paper watermarked for 1803, but possibly pre-dating the 1807 re-issue, which bore an English title page.
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La Divina Comedia di Dante Alighieri ... disegnata da Giovanni Flaxman.... London: Thomas Hope, 1793 (but 1803 or later).
La Divina Comedia di Dante Alighieri ... disegnata da Giovanni Flaxman.... London: Thomas Hope, 1793 (but 1803 or later).
Oblong 4to (325 x 222 mm). Engraved title page and 110 plates. Contemporary calf gilt rebacked in morocco, edges gilt. Corners bumped, some chipping to covers, foxing and marginal browning throughout.
Provenance: Mary S. Collins (bookplate); gift inscription in ink on front blank: "To William Harness, from his affte. friend H.P. Hope" (Henry Philip Hope, 1774-1839, the publisher's brother).
Flaxman was best known as a sculptor, having entered the Royal Academy as a student at 15, and later working at Wedgewood designing reliefs for their neo-classical ceramics. He went to Rome in 1787 to study classical art, where he met Anglo-Dutch banker and patron of the arts Thomas Hope. Hope commissioned Flaxman to prepare these line drawings for Dante's La Divina Commedia in 1793. The plates were engraved by Tommaso Piroli. The present volume is a later issue, with paper watermarked for 1803, but possibly pre-dating the 1807 re-issue, which bore an English title page.
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