Estimate
€ 600 - 1.000
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Current bid Starting bid
€ 600
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At auction on Friday 09 May 2025 at 14:30
Information
50 x 67 cm
Original illustration made by Manfredini between 1904 and 1907 for his famous edition of "The Divine Comedy" published by Nerbini in 1908. Posting holes, slight creases and small tears in the margins. Signed. Born in Ferrara in 1881, Manfredini moved to Florence in 1904, the year in which the publisher Giuseppe Nerbini commissioned a new edition of the Comedy, asking him to illustrate the one hundred cantos of the poem. During the feverish and excited performance of this laborious work, Manfredini fell madly in love with the Ukrainian opera singer Solomija Krusel'nyc'ka; his unrequited love drove him to madness and to several violent episodes that resulted in numerous arrests. In April 1907 he was arrested after being found in possession of a pistol and a bottle of vitriol (probably intended for the Ukrainian soprano), he was then admitted to the Mombello mental asylum in Brianza where, after an agony lasting forty days, Manfredini officially died from a serious form of pulmonary tuberculosis. His work remained unfinished, stopping at the XXX canto of Purgatory, Nerbini then decided to entrust the remaining panels to the Neapolitan Tancredi Scarpelli.