The illustrated edition

A number of illustrated editions of novels already existed in European publishing. Manzoni would have been able to see examples by opening some of the books in his library, such as the French edition (1803) of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Moreover, the engravers he saw frequently during the preparation of the “sketches” to be inserted into his own novel showed him their collection of illustrations for works such as Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, de La Fontaine’s fables and Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Although the choice of illustrating the new edition of the Promessi Sposi with images and drawings was initially linked to his idea of being his own publisher in order to prevent forgeries of his work, Manzoni ended up passionately involved in the artistic merit of the enterprise and considered the accompanying illustrations a necessary component of his novel. Confirming Manzoni’s commitment and interest in this illustration phase (the other was the tormented and endless correction phase) are the letters he wrote regularly to Francesco Gonin, the Turin-based painter who drew the sketches for the engravers. These letters convey clearly Manzoni’s appreciation of the smallest technical details of landscape, portraits and groups drawn by Gonin and their correspondence to the personality traits of his characters (Lucia’s emotionality, Renzo’s temper, etc) and his concern that the engravers would not render the original drawing well. There is also a manuscript by Manzoni on the Motivi delle vignette dei Promessi Sposi, namely Manzoni’s proposals to the illustrator for drawings for the whole novel, indicating size and providing suggestions for carrying out the drawings. Manzoni’s intention was that the iconography of his novel would document the historical reality of seventeenth century customs, places and people, and also form an alliance with the verbal component of his work and thus contribute to the expression of its poetic message.