The Reproduced Manuscripts of Dante's work

Link: http://www.danteonline.it/english/home_ita.asp         No document signed by Dante has been preserved for us today. In addition, none of the original manuscripts of the Divine Comedy and no other original copies or even a signature exist today. Luckily, just after he died Dante's acclaim was great enough to circulate hundreds of copies of his work throughout Italy. The only other text that has has many copies of manuscripts in existence as the Comedy is the Bible. These copies exist both reproduced by famous copyists like Boccaccio, as well as simple scribes working in manuscript workshops during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, this mass and wide spread reproduction also lead to some versions being drastically changed. Therefore, it is impossible to be certain of the original text.        The Societa Dantesca Italiana has created their website in order to open up the existing manuscripts of Dante's works to the access of millions of people. This collection brings all the manuscripts of Dante's work into one convenient Digital library free to the public.

Above is the title page to Dante's Comedy, reproduce by Boccaccio.

As you can in the image above, these copies were very well preserved. I especially appreciate the elaborate additions to dress up the text, but I wish that the lines were shown in their tersets, although maybe Dante did not have them written like that.

Above is a later reproduction, done in the fifteenth century. This version of the Inferno was made richly decorated on purpose; most manuscripts were not decorated to make them affordable. However, this edition was made especially for the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. It is one of the works by a miniaturist of high regard who lived in northern Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century known as the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum.  At the end of the century, it was passed into the hands of King Louis XII of France with the French descent into Italy, and was routinely passed around as gift and family heirloom until being preserved at the Bibliotheque National de France.