La 'Commedia' e il mondo mediterraneo. Topografia ed elementi attualizzanti nelle illustrazioni di due incunaboli veneziani (Benali-Capcasa e Piasi, 1491)

The present work aims to highlight the visual reading of Dante’s Paradiso offered by the Venetian prints Benali-Capcasa and Piasi, published in Venice on 3th March and 18th November 1491 respectively; they are accompanied by Cristoforo Landino’s Comento so-pra la Comedia and both contain a corpus of woodcuts covering all three cantica, for the first time in the printed tradition of the poem. The content of some of the illustrations in the two incunabula reflects an interest in the actual topography of the poem through the reproduction of miniature views of Italian and “exotic” cities and islands. The article also emphasises how this phenomenon can be traced back to a renewed interest in the physical world, which is conventionally ascribed to the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s Geographia in the 15th century, and which is accompanied by new logics of interpretation of real space in the literary and visual arts scene. In this scenario, one can also observe a gradual change in the modes of reading and reception of Dante’s poem. Furthermore, the contribution dwells on the content of specific images transmitted by the Venetian incunabula and relating to certain cantos of Paradiso, which share the presence of the maritime element; the relationship between literary space and real space is investigated in these illustrations, in certain cases (Pd. II, XIX, XXVII) identifying pos-sible actualising elements that highlight a gap between these images – which are some-times posed as spaces of interpretation by readers – and the texts they refer to (Dante’s and Landino’s).The ultimate purpose is to highlight how images, when combined with a text such as the Commedia, can be bearers of meaning, as well as adding a piece to the methodological studies on the iconographical tradition of Dante’s poem.