Vergilius Vaticanus
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Folio 22r from the Vatican Virgil contains an illustration from the Aeneid of the flight from Troy. |
The Vergilius Vaticanus (also known as the
Vatican Virgil) is an
illuminated manuscript containing fragments of
Virgil's
Aeneid and
Georgics made in
Rome in about 400. It is one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid and is the oldest and best preserved extant illustrated manuscript of classical literature. The two other surviving illustrated manuscripts of classical literature are the
Vergilius Romanus and the
Ambrosian Iliad. It is now in the
Biblioteca Apostolica in the
Vatican (Cod. Vat. lat. 3225).
There are 76 surviving leaves in the manuscript with 50 illustrations. If, as was common practice at the time, the manuscript contained all of the canonical works of Virgil, the manuscript would originally had about 440 leaves and 280 illustrations. The text was written by a single scribe in
rustic capitals. As was common at the time, there is no separation between words. The scribe worked first leaving spaces for the illustrations. The illustrations were added by three different painters, all of whom used iconographic copybooks. The illustrations are contained within ornate golden frames and include
landscapes and architectural and other details. The human figures are painted in classical style with natural proportions and drawn with vivacity. The style of these miniatures has been compared to the
frescos found at
Pompeii. The framed miniatures are set within the text column, although a few mimiatures occupy a full page.
The manuscript was probably made for a pagan noble. Annotations in the manuscript indicate it was in
Italy until
7th century and in
Tours in the second quarter of the
9th century. A French scribe made further notes around
1400.
The Vergilius Vaticanus is not to be confused with the
Vergilius Romanus (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica, Cod. Vat. lat. 3867) or the
Vergilius Augusteus, two other ancient Vergilian manuscripts in the
Biblioteca Apostolica.
*Calkins, Robert G.
Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983.
*Weitzmann, Kurt.
Late Antique and Early Christin Book Illumination. New York: George Braziller, 1977.
*David H. Wright,
The Vatican Vergil, a Masterpiece of Late Antique Art (Berkeley, 1993).
