Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1880.

Miniature Book. 2 1/8 x 1 5/8 inches. Unpaginated. [74] pp. Half-title, title page printed in red and black inks, 30 original photographic images mounted on plates with tissue guards, decorative initials, tailpieces, index; text unmarked, title page repaired with cellophane tape, pages toned, some leaves with small marginal chips, text and tissue guard torn at images 15 and 16, ms. notation on half-title. Full tan morocco, elaborately gilt, raised bands, tan leather spine label titled in blind, red leather onlays within a medallion in the center panel of both the front and rear cover, all edges gilt, gilt green patterned end-papers, turn-ins gilt; binding square and tight, title page torn and repaired with cellophane tape with corresponding toning, spine and rear cover with some toning, LACKS slip case. SA1019-030. SCARCE. Very Good.

SECOND EDITION. THE FIRST MINIATURE BOOK TO CONTAIN PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES. This work was issued as a companion volume to Ulrico Hoepli's La Divina Commedia (Milan, 1878, known affectionately as the Dantino). "It contains thirty original photographs in black-and-white of the paintings by Scaramuzza [which] represent the earliest use of photography in a miniature book." Bromer and Edison. Of the Galleria Dantesca Microscopica, Bondy writes, "the few copies we have been able to see were bound in publisher's citron morocco with finely gilt-tooled covers, and an ornamental centre design on oval maroon leather onlays, raised bands, gilt edges, inside dentelle and endpapers decorated in silver and gold." Bondy. The photographs are of the paintings of Francesco Scaramuzza's (1803-1886) graphic depictions of Dante's Divine Comedy. Scaramuzza was an Italian painter and poet of the Romantic period in Northern Italy. He painted mythologic and historic canvases, but is best known for his interpretations of literary subjects including Dante, an enterprise to which he dedicated decades. Scaramuzza was trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of Parma where he was a professor from 1860-1877. See: Wikipedia.

Currently, Hoepli is one of the largest bookstores in Europe. It is based in Milan, with a store that occupies six floors and boasts more than 500,000 titles. Today their catalog emphasizes technology, textbooks, school, and university publishing. The store was founded in 1870 by Swiss bookseller Ulrico Hoepli, who was born in 1847 in the Swiss village of Tuttwil. Ulrico moved to Milan at the age of 23 to take over the family bookshop located in the Galleria de Cristoforis, a shopping mall in Milan. While that particular shopping mall was torn down in 1931, the Hoepli bookshop was given a spot in the same area where it was originally located and where it persists to this day.

REFERENCES: Bondy, Miniature Books, p. 95; Bromer & Edison, Miniature Books, pp. 47-9; Welsh, A Bibliography of Miniature Books, No. 2178 (Welsh records an 1879 edition, No. 2177).