La Vita Nuova - Dante Alighieri

If the Divine Comedy represents the most complicated voluminous and famous of Dante’s works, La Vita Nuova is his most sublime poetic composition. The story of his love for Beatrice starting from their first encounter when she was only nine years old is described by Dante in pure Stilnovo and offers a poetic autobiography documenting young Dante’s adhesion to the ideals and spiritual evolution of the Stilnovo. In the past, La Vita Nuova has inspired many writers and artists, even if only one illustrated, full-color edition has been produced in the six centuries since its creation. In 1921, year of the sixth-centennial of Dante Alighieri’s death, three artists worked together to create what we can consider today to be a real and perhaps unique illuminated manuscript of the 20th century – La Vita Nuova – illustrated with forty original watercolors by Vittorio Grassi, entirely hand written by the calligrapher Enrico Brignoli, and decorated on every page by Nestore Leoni’s decorations.