Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics (Christ Church MS 114), 1456

Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics (Christ Church MS 114), 1456

The manuscript contains the texts of Virgil's Eclogues (a collection of pastoral poems) and the Georgics (a didactic poem on farming).

Headings in small capitals, and introductions to texts in combinations of small capitals and text style. At the openings of the two texts, ten- and eight-line a bianchi girari initial (fol. 3, 10 line; fol. 16, 8 line), the capital in gold leaf on blue, red, and green, with a dense pattern of three white dots; that at fol. 3 extended into a corner border in the same flower and vine design. These are in the same style as Christ Church MS 113, fol. 2, and thus are by the artist who also illuminated Oxford: Corpus Christi College, MS 79.

Matteo Contugi of Volterra (c.1429-1493). It was written in a humanist littera antiqua by the Italian scribe Matteo Contugi of Volterra. Text: Vergilius Maro, Publius.

https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/9628b4a0-0429-4e81-8959-7e7b8c0dbfc6/

University of Oxford

1456

Hope Yu

© The Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford

Book, Green morocco over millboards, gold-stamped outline border, and geometrical designs on the spine. Sewn on five thongs. On the spine ‘M.S. Virgilii Bucolic. Georgic. Liber 1456’.260 x 175 mm.

Latin

Book, 260 x 175 mm.

Description based on Ralph Hanna and David Rundle, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Manuscripts, to c. 1600, in Christ Church, Oxford (Oxford, 2017).

Italy, Ferrara

Book, Parchment

260 x 175 mm.