Abstract

This article presents a new hypothesis regarding the dating and localization of the decorative and iconographic cycle of the composite manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 40 15, containing Dante Alighieri’s ‘Commedia’. Despite its extensive illustrative apparatus, the first codicological unit belongs to the “Danti del Centoµ group, unlike the other manuscripts included in the same group. These miniatures, which have been largely overlooked in illumination studies, have generally been attributed to Italy or 15th century Florence. Through a series of comparisons with a group of witnesses that were illuminated in Venice in the first half of the 14th century, this article suggests that the manuscript’s iconographic cycle was created in Venice during that period