A Millennium of Studying the Vatican Vergil

FROM COPY TO FACSIMILE: A MILLENNIUM OF STUDYING THE VATICAN VERGIL

DAVID H. WRIGHT

BOOKS do have their fate. When it was produced in Rome sometime around A.D. 400, presumably for a wealthy pagan aristocrat of the old school, the manuscript we know as the Vatican Vergil (Vat. lat. 3225) was a nice book for a gentleman's library, but not an extraordinary artistic accomplishment. It consisted of about 440 folios of fine parchment, but included some leaves with minor defects.^ The pages were about 24 cm. high and 21 cm. wide (the height of this Jouryial but one inch wider), much smaller than the slightl\ later classical books we know as the Codex Romanus of Vergil (about 35 by 33-5 cm.) or the Codex Augusteus of Vergil (about 42 by 35 cm.), two very pretentious coffee-table books. The text was written by a good scribe in a fluent version of Rustic capitals, the script expected for such a book, but it was not free of errors and careless omissions. It was illustrated with about 280 framed paintings inserted in the text at the appropriate places, a modest undertaking by comparison with the slightly later Greek Christian manuscript known as the Cotton Genesis, which had about 360 illustrations for only one book of the Bible. As fate would have it, the Vatican Vergil survived while many comparable books vanished without a trace. Ever since the ninth century, this book, successively reduced to a small fraction of its original extent, has been admired and studied by artists and scholars as the most impressive surviving example of an illustrated classical literary text. That study included writing some corrections in the text and annotations in the margins, and also copying the illustrations for various purposes. Accordingly, an examination of those copies and their purposes offers a uniquely rich case study in the transmission of classical art and the early development of art historical scholarship. Various small corrections in the text show that the Vatican Vergil was repeatedly studied by alert readers during the first two centuries of its existence. Indeed, it was handled so much that a number of passages needed to be retraced where the ink flaked off the smooth flesh side of the parchment, and nearly all the labels in the illustrations were also retraced. This seems to have been done around the sixth century, to judge from the script of the small corrections associated with the retracing. Presumably the book was then still in private hands, the property of someone who still took an active interest in studving and preserving classical poetry and art, reflecting, perhaps, the attitude of Cass^odorus But since the last such corrections can be no later than the seventh century

12 X N1 i 1C M5 S V t it O-N' 0 N W V a M <.N. ON COiCAV XT U < •

Fig. I. Vatican Vergil, f. 45V: Aeneas and Achates approach the Sybil in front of the Temple of Apollo (Aeneid, VI, U. 45-6). By courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana it seems that at the beginning of the Dark Ages the book was ignored. We can only speculate on what happened next, but it is likely that Charlemagne obtained it and took it to his court at Aachen, and that after his death in 814, when his library was divided up/ it went to Tours. 13 -44,;

f,, 2 Vivian Bible (Paris, B. N. lat. i), f. 386v: The conversion, healing and preaching of St Paul. 'Phot. Bibl. Nat. Paris' 14 By around 840 the Vatican Vergil was certainly at Tours, where it was studied, corrected, and repaired. One leaf had been lost and the missing text was then copied at the bottom of the preceding page, though nothing could be done to replace the illustration that had also been lost. A few important corrections were still needed, such as the missing line inserted in good imitation Rustic capitals on f. ior (fig. 11), and many smaller corrections were added by at least three Carolingian scribes.^ But much more interesting in historical perspective, and much more fruitful for the development of European art, was the way the artists at Tours studied the Vatican Vergil. One of them used a stylus to trace the outlines of Aeneas, Achates, and the Sibyl in the illustration on f. 45V (fig. i). Then he redrew the copy he made in this way of Aeneas and Achates, at slightly larger size, making the gestures a little more urgent, and used them to represent two of the Jews listening to St Paul preaching in the Synagogue in the great Bible he was then preparing at the command of Charles the Bald (fig. 2), which was finished probably in 846. Of course an artist of that period depended on an iconographic model, and would never have thought of drawing from life, but it is particularly suggestive that when he wanted to enrich what may have been a rather modest bibhcal composition depicting the life of St Paul, he chose to study the fine ancient Vergil his monastery happened to own. It seems not to have bothered him that the Roman spear and military cloak of Aeneas were not appropriate for St Paul's audience in the Synagogue. He was attracted by the intrinsic qualities of coherent expressive action in the figures and deep spatial composition in the paintings, and so he borrowed motifs for their stylistic qualities, ignoring their actual subjects. Indeed, the Tours artists developed much of their distinctive style, perhaps the most accomplished narrative painting of Carolingian times, by studying the Vatican Vergil. The book was probably nearly complete when they had it, but we have less than a fifth of it today; no other specific copying can now be identified, but the more general dependence, especially in landscape elements, is obvious to any student of Carolingian art. Tours was almost totally destroyed by Vikings in 853. Our Vergil survived but seems to have been ignored in the next centuries, for there is only one minor late Carolingian annotation in it, perhaps of the eleventh century. Even by that time a book written in Rustic capitals without word division would have been considered extremely difficult to read;* I know of only one such book with extensive corrections added in the twelfth century, and that is the Codex Romanus of Vergil, which then was in Saint-Denis, in the time of the great Abbot Suger.'^ After a long period of neglect, probably reduced to about half its original extent, the Vatican Vergil surfaced at the beginning of the fifteenth century in the hands of an early French humanist. He studied it carefully, made a few small corrections and some notes in the margins of how much was then missing." He also studied the illustrations closely, adding a few labels, and drawing discreetly in light brown ink a few outlines to make the damaged illustrations more legible. Thus in the scene of Watering the Flocks (fig. 6) he added part of the outline of the central animal and the left herdsman, but he did no more than what he considered essential. This was respectful antiquarian study of a precious

15 Fig. J. \ atican Vergil, f. 27r: The City of Pergamea {Aenetd, III, 11. 135-42). By courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana relic from antiquity, suggesting what we would consider a proper modern attitude. But he worked at a time when artists were too dependent on the conventions of the Gothic style to have any understanding for such paintings and so it should not surprise us that we know of no copies of the illustrations from that period. The next owners of the Vatican Vergil were much less scrupulous. Several apparently Italian hands wrote brief comments in the margins and even on top of the badly damaged first illustration, but these were so thoroughly erased, probably during a rebinding at the \'atican Library in the middle of the seventeenth century, that nothing of much interest can be read. The entry vtodo sic to the right of the sun in the scene of Watering the Flocks is one example. In 1582, Fulvio Orsini, who had bought the Vatican Vergil three years earlier, claimed that it had belonged to the Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano (r. 1422-1503), but there is no independent confirmation for this, and we know enough about Pontano for it to be surprising we have not heard of his owning such a rare and splendid book.' Since the Vatican Vergil suffered extensive losses after the French humanist annotated it, and is now only a collection of scattered fragments of the original book, perhaps it is just as well we do not know whom to blame. 16 Fig. 4. Vatican Vergil, f. 28r: The Penates appear to Aeneas in his sleep {Aeneid, III, 11. 147-53). By courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

In retrospect we might wish that the Vatican Vergil could have been known to the Medici and their artists and scholars in Florence, but it must seem divinely ordained that it should be closely studied by Raphael and his circle in Rome beginning around 1514. Raphael himself borrowed motifs from it for his composition // morbetto, best known today from an engraving of it by Marcantonio Raimondi (fig. 5).^ The subject comes from Book III of the Aeneid, where Aeneas tells how during his wanderings after fleeing Troy he had established the city of Pergamea only to watch it devastated by drought and pestilence. Then in a dream the Penates, the household gods, appeared to him to tell him his fate was to journey on to Italy to found his new city. With this fine ancient book at hand, naturally Raphael turned to the illustration of that passage (fig. 4) to find authentic details. He copied the couch, the garments, and some hint of the architecture, but he rearranged the postures of the figures to make a more compact composition. He also studied the preceding illustration in the Vatican Vergil (fig. 3), which shows the city of Pergamea devastated by drought and disease; from that he took the motif of the dead animals in the foreground, a feature not specifically mentioned in Vergil's text. In effect Raphael's approach was the opposite of the Carolingian artist's. Raphael sought authentic details of iconography that he could copy and adapt in a work of his mature 17 Ftg. 5. Fngraving by Marcantonio Raimondo after Raphael, // morbetto. The Warburg Institute, Bartsch XIV.314.417. By courtesy of The Warburg Institute

st\ le, while the Carolingian painter needed help in developing his style and was prepared to ignore inappropriate aspects of iconography that happened to be present in his model. Another engraving from this circle, Marco Dente's Laocoon^'^ may also depend on a design by Raphael, and certainly derives some details from the Vatican Vergil as well as from the famous sculpture that had been discovered in Rome in 1506. The gestures of Laocoon are those of the manuscript, not the sculpture, and some details in the landscape, such as the altar, the temple, and the serpents coming across the sea, are again elements of authentic iconography adapted from the ancient painting. A vast number of similar antiquarian borrowings from the Vatican Vergil can be found in the woodcuts published in Rome in 1527 illustrating Marco Fabio Calvo's Antiquae urbis Romae cum regtonihus simulacrum }^^ Calvo was a scholar who worked for Raphael at least from 1514 until Raphael's death in 1520. Although the publication was delayed, the original idea was certainly Raphael's and had been proposed by him to Leo X in a letter of 1519. The stmulacrum consists of a set of schematic diagrams, not maps, recording the monuments of ancient Rome as they are mentioned in ancient sources, not as they could be at least 18 PLATE I

.-s Lansdowne MS. 834, f. 2r: Frontispiece, dated 1642 PLATE II

atican \crgil, f. 8\ : The Cyclops at the Forge and Georgics, IV, 11. 170-4. By courtesy of the Bibtwteca Apostolica Vaticana PLATE III

Lansdowne MS. 834, f. iiv: copy of the Vatican Vergil, f. 8v PLATE IV

\ atican \crgil, f. 6ov: The Trojan Emissaries before King Latinus {Aeneid, VII, 11. 192-4). By courtesy of the Bibiioteca Apostolica Vaticana

b) I-ansdowne MS. 834, f- 66r: copy of the illustration on f. 6ov of the Vatican Vergil 6. Vatican Vergil, f. 6r: Watering the Flocks at mid-morning in Summer (Georgics, III, 11. 327-30) and Georgics^ III, 11. 322-7. By courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vatuana Fig. J. Anonymous engraving after Watering the Flocks. The Warburg Institute, Bartsch XV.51.8. By courtesy of The Warburg Institute partly observed on the site. To illustrate the diagrams, therefore, the artist who cut the wood blocks, Ptolomco Egnatio of Fossombrone, otherwise unknown, did not make sketches on the spot but under Calvo's direction sought the best available repertory of authentic depictions of ancient houses, temples, and the like. His chief source was, of course, the Vatican Vergil. Two other works from Raphael's circle, however, suggest a different approach to this venerable book, not the adaptation for a modern work of ancient details selected for their authenticity, but respectful copying of whole miniatures as works of art. An unattributable engraving from this circle (fig. 7)^' is a copy of the miniature illustrating a passage in the Ceorgics where Vergil tells herdsmen to water the flocks at mid-morning on a hot summer day (fig. 6). It is reversed from right to left and the sun is changed from the ancient personification in the middle of the sky to an emanation of light behind the trees, but clearly the intention is to copy the miniature for publication. Since this passage {Ceorgics, III, 11. 327-30) is not famous and the painting is seriously damaged, it is hard to see why this miniature should have been chosen. It seems reasonable to suppose that this engraving was originally planned to be one of a series, possibly including the nine that survive for the Ceorgics or perhaps all fifty that survive in the manuscript. That implicit purpose of making a complete copy of the miniatures was achieved at this time in a manuscript now at Princeton. This consists of rapid but quite faithful pen

20 Fig. 8. Princeton MS. 104, f. 48r: copy of Watering the Flocks. By courtesy of Princeton University Library and wash copies of all the illustrations of the Vatican Vergil made by an artist of modest ability on folded sheets of paper (now Princeton MS. 104).^^ In these drawings damaged areas of the miniatures are interpreted reasonably and nothing is added. Thus in the scene of Watering the Flocks (fig. 8) the personification of the sun is shown, if not quite accurately, and the three most damaged animals, which actually are goats, are shown as cattle, as they are also in the engraving, but here the landscape is left indefinite. Such careful observation, quite different from later copies, as we shall shortly realize, suggests an almost modern archaeological respect for the actual state of the surviving book. To complete the work, a professional scribe copied appropriate lines of Vergil facing each illustration, taking them from a printed edition. In at least one case the Renaissance scribe improved on the arrangement in the Vatican Vergil, for he chose correct verses for the scene of Venus addressing Neptune {Aeneid, V, 11. 779-82), even though in the manuscript this illustration is wrongly placed some thirty lines further on in the text. While the purpose here, obviously, was to make a precious object for a collector, the approach was scholarly and respectful of the integrity of this relic from antiquity. The patron required that the artist see the object at a fixed distance in historical perspective.

21 Fig. g. Pen and wash copy of Watering the Flocks. Windsor Castle, Royal Library, 26677.© Her Majesty The Queen

Around this time, Pictro Bcmbo acquired the Vatican Vergil and took it with him when he retired to Padua in 1521, removing it from the artistic eirele where it had been so intensively studied; he brought it back to Rome when he was a cardinal, from 1539 until his death in 1547, and between 1545 and 1547 it was studied but apparently not copied by Antonio Agusti'n.^'' Then it belonged to Torquato Bembo in Padua until Fulvio Orsini bought it in 1579 and bequeathed it to the Vatican in 1600. But the next known project to make copies of the miniatures was in 1632, when Cassiano dal Pozzo borrowed the Vatican Vergil twice to have copies made for his tnuseo cartaceo\ then in 1641 young Camillo Massimi borrowed it also for copying. In the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle are two albums of such copies, unfortunately severely trimmed, pasted onto modern paper, and rebound in partly defective order around 1790. They are part of the vast collection of antiquarian drawings bought from Cardinal Albani for George III in 1762; the main part of that collection was certainly formed by Cassiano dal Pozzo, but some drawings are demonstrably later than his death in 1657 and were probably added by his brother Carlo Antonio, who died in 1689. The Vergil copies are usually assumed to be the ones made for Cassiano in 1632, but they are so closely related to the engravings made for Camillo Massimi when he was

a Cardinal in 1677 that I believe they must have been in his collection at that time and therefore are probably the copies made for him as a young man in 1641.^'* These two Windsor sets are complete, except for the omission of the severely damaged first page of the manuscript. One copy is in expert pen and wash, the other in relatively clumsy watercolour, but the two sets agree so closely in invented details that they must be the work of the same hand, and we must suppose that this draftsman was less skilled in watercolour and perhaps worked more hastily in that phase of the project. In the copies of Watering the Flocks, for example (figs. 9 and 10), he correctly restored both animals at the left as goats, but wrongly made the animal at the right an impossibly small bovine creature (as had both the engraving and the Princeton manuscript over a century earlier). He also used essentially the same invented landscape details in both his copies, quite different from the invented landscape in the engraving made over a century earlier. Because the Windsor copies have been trimmed even into the edges of the frames we cannot be sure how they were arranged originally, but it seems unlikely that any text would have been discarded when they were remounted for the Royal Collection. The watercolours show wear around the edges suggesting that they were once laid onto sheets cut out behind them, as are many copies in the surviving dai Pozzo albums, and the pen and wash copies have fainter traces of the same kind of previous mounting. The purpose

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fi* ^ ^'i 7 ^ k i < 5 < 7 o ~ ~ C 7 ^J D ai -^ :^ '^. -x =: rt Q. z 5 5 I §5g 5 7 H-l cyz^ 2 CJ X Q -I Z 7 £ t 2 s 5 2 < e 7 2, o -j ^ 7 7 7 z O X ^ ^ ^ 5f^ ^ f*^^ < 7 = 7 < = z 7 Z -3 O' o ?|7 2^ P — 7 -lei VJ id tti ^^= seems to have been to copy the illustrations as works of art apart from Vergil's text and to improve the style in accordance with contemporary taste. This is a less scholarly antiquarumism than in the Princeton manuscript, which is not as elegantly executed, but where the appropriate text was written opposite the illustration, and where the landscape was not modernized. Collecting such copies as works of art surely reflects the taste of the very wealthy young Camillo Massimi; he took lessons from Poussin, and remained his close friend as well as a major patron. He also commissioned paintings by Claude Lorraine and had his portrait painted by Velazquez. Cassiano dal Pozzo, on the other hand, took a more scholarly and encyclopaedic approach, collecting material for both antiquarian and scientific study; his copies of the Vatican Terence manuscript, for example, are mostly organized collections of copies of individual figures from different scenes rather than copies of complete illustrations. Cassiano's interest in costume and other authentic antiquarian details comes closer to Raphael's approach than to that of an art collector. However, in later life, as a prominent cardinal, Massimi broadened the scope of his art collecting in an astonishingly modern direction: he commissioned the first true facsimile of a manuscript, a copy of the Vatican Vergil that is now Lansdowne MS. 834 in the British Library. His scribe was required to copy the text exactly, line for line, in imitation Rustic capitals, even distinguishing between original text and corrections. Figure 12 compared to fig. 11 shows how successfully he carried out this task. He even reproduced the small Carolingian 'O' above line 6 on f gv, although he assimilated the similar Carolingian correction 'BI' above line 4, and neglected the ancient correction of a final 'E' at the end of that line. The same comparison reveals, on the other hand, that the painter, Pietro Santi Bartoli, filled out the missing area conjecturally, while the copyist of the Princeton manuscript left all such areas empty. Plates 2 and 3 give a much better impression of the excellence of Cardinal Massimi's facsimile. The scribe made an expert copy of the five lines of text, reproducing distinctive features of this script such as the tall 'F' on the first line, even if he missed some subtleties such as the slightly enlarged 'A' at the beginning of that line. Bartoli ruled a frame in pencil the exact size of the original and then copied the painting in watercolours with remarkable understanding and self-restraint. He did introduce a false horizon and he made a few details such as the posture of the boy at the right more natural than they actually are, but his work comes closer to being an exact facsimile than had ever been attempted in previous copies. Bartoli is best known for his many engravings of antiquities and also for his painted copies of ancient wall paintings; for those he made ink sketches on the spot, including notes on the colours to be used when he made the finished copies in his studio. But for the Massimi facsimile it is clear that he worked with the Vatican Vergil in front of him. These copies have some pencil underdrawing and his watercolour technique is far more fresh and direct than in his usual work. The brushwork in the faces is livelier and more suggestive, if not always as incisive. In his copy of the miniature showing the Trojan emissaries before King Latinus (plate 4b) he has clarified some details of the architecture 26 a little too much, misunderstood the location of the Trojan at the end of the procession, and imposed too much of his own style on the foliage, but the total effect is quite faithful. This is a very sensitive antiquarian copy. It seems that Bartoli worked first, on single sheets of paper that would later be attached to corresponding sheets to be bound in place, and then the scribe copied the text in the appropriate spaces on those sheets. Unfortunately the planning was not perfect, and as early as f 7V of the Vatican Vergil Bartoli made a mistake and copied the illustration at the top of the page when it belongs at the bottom of the page. After that the work proceeded smoothly until f. 16 of the Vatican Vergil; here the recto was copied correctly with its illustration but the verso of that sheet in the facsimile is blank and the next sheet has the text of both sides of f 16 of the Vatican manuscript but not the illustration. The same error occurred in copying the next folio but f 18 was correctly copied. Folio 19 brought a different problem for it has illustrations on both sides; this was solved by cutting out Bartoli's copy of the verso painting and pasting it down in the correct position below the text on the verso. The problem of blank verso and duplicated text recurred with f. 22, and at f 24 Bartoli's copy of the full-page illustration on the verso was bound in as a separate recto; then the co-ordination of painter and scribe broke down permanently in copying f 27. The scribe continued to copy the text as far as f. 36 and Bartoli copied all the rest of the illustrations, but they were treated as separate rectos when bound. The incomplete text and the confusion in the binding must be the result of Cardinal Massimi's death in September 1677 while the facsimile was still in production. His heir evidently stopped the project and had the binding stamped with the Cardinal's coat of arms modified to show a coronet instead of the Cardinal's hat. The book has a title page with a simple classical frame and an inscription in gold capitals on red: P. Virgilii Maronis opera quae superstint in antiquo codice vaticano ad priscam literarum et imaginum formats descripta in bibliotheca eminentiss. Camilli Maximi Cardinalis an. MDCLXXVII. But in front of that title page, on a separate sheet of thinner paper somewhat worn around the edges, ^^ is an earlier title page with an elaborate classical aedicula and a landscape beautifully painted in watercolour (plate i); it has the significantly different inscription: Camillus Maximus imagines ex P. Virgilit Maronts veteri codice qui in bibliothaeca vaticana servatur Urbani VIII Pont. Maximi concessu pingi curavit MDCXLH; it also has the simpler coat of arms used by the young Camillo Massimi with a coronet. The second title page obviously refers to the facsimile, describing a book with the text of Vergil, while the earlier title page is for a collection of imagines, that is a book of copies of illustrations, made with papal authorization in 1642. Those copies are probably the ones now in Windsor. In 1677 they were no longer needed in the family collection because the new facsimile, even if incomplete in its text, had displaced them; therefore their fine title page with the family identification was remounted and the copies themselves may have been sold to Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo, who was then reorganizing and expanding his late brother's museo cartaceo. At the same time Bartoli also produced a set of engravings after all but the severely

27 Georg. libr. iii. verf. 322.

AT VERO ZEPHYRIS CUM LAETA VOCANTIBUS AESTAS IX SALTUS UTRUMQ^GRAEGEM. ATCLJN PASCUA MrTTBS. LUCIFERI PRIMO CUM SIDERE. FRIGIDA RURA CARPAMUS. DUM MANE NOVUM. DUM GRAMTNA CANENT. ET ROS IN TENERA PECORI GRATISSIMUS HERBA. INDE. UBI QUARTA SITIM CAELI COLLEGERIT HORA.

Fig. fj. The 1741 diplomatic edition of the Vatican Vergil, f. 6r, with Bartoli's 1677 engraving of Watering the Flocks. BL, Cup.652.dd.5, p. 15

28 PEINTVKE. DV VIE.GILE DE LA BIBL ^/'A^:ICANZ

Fig. 14. Seroux d'Agincourt's engraving of Watering the Flocks. BL, 649.6.3, vol. v, plate lxv (detail) damaged first illustration in the Vatican Vergil and also after six of the nineteen illustrations in the Codex Romanus of Vergil. These were published with a very simple title page set in type: P. Virgilii Maroms opera quae supersunt in antiquo codice vattcano ad priscam imaginum formam incisca a Petro Sancte Bartoli in bibliotecha [sic] Camilli Maximi Cardinalis ann. MDCLXXVII. This title was adapted from the one devised for the facsimile, retaining the specification of patronage and adding the identification of the artist, but it is somewhat misleading in that the distinction between the two illustrated manuscripts of Vergil in the Vatican Library is not mentioned and the presence of Vergil's text is implied when there is none, though the specification that the facsimile was copied ad priscam literarum formam is omitted. These engravings, unfortunately, were much less carefully or accurately copied than the watercolours in Cardinal Massimi's facsimile. They include the same invented extensions of lost parts of illustrations (as in fig. 12) but they go further in modernizing the landscapes, as evident in fig. 13. Perhaps the engravings were made by an assistant under Bartoli's supervision for although they include details that were his invention and 29 J. Copy by Giovanni Carattoni of Seroux's engraving. BL, 649.C.16, vol. iii, plate lxv (detail) are also in the facsimile, they were not made in front of the manuscript but depend in large part on the pen and wash drawings now in Windsor. In the scene of Watering the Flocks (fig. 13) the miniature bovine animal and several invented details of shrubbery are taken from the Windsor drawing (fig. 9) and in other analogous comparisons the specific dependence on the pen and wash drawings rather than the Windsor watercolours or the Massimi facsimile is more obvious. Evidently these pen and wash copies were chosen as convenient models for the engraver when the manuscript itself was not available, and that fact is the main reason for supposing that the Windsor copies are the ones made for young Camillo Massimi in 1641-2 rather than those made for Cassiano dal Pozzo in 1632-3. The first publication of these engravings seems to have been very limited, perhaps because of the confusion after the Cardinal's death,^** but in 1725 they were republished with short captions in Latin and citations of the Vergilian text,^' and in 1741 the same plates were used to give the illustrations in the diplomatic edition of the Vatican Vergil prepared by Giovanni Bottari, Second Custodian of the Vatican Library. ^^ In that way Bartoli's engravings after the Vatican Vergil became very commonly known and were

30 Fig. i6. Lithograph by Carlo Ruspi of Watering the Flocks. BL, 832.m.3(2), plate xii even copied clumsily for other editions of Vergil in the eighteenth century. Bottari's work, published anonymously, included brief descriptions of all the Vergil manuscripts in the Vatican Library, but as a diplomatic edition attempting to produce the typeset equivalent of a facsimile it was not nearly as successful as the contemporary work in Florence by Pier Francesco Foggini, who had some special letters cut and took great care to record marginal annotations and the like.^^ Cardinal Massimi's hand-made facsimile had been a unique advance from the point of view of an art collector and antiquarian, but Foggini was far ahead of Bottari in making available for scholarly study all the complexities of textual transmission to be observed in a particular manuscript. Achieving an adequate standard of engraved copies of the Vatican Vergil was the contribution of the French aristocrat and former tax farmer Jean Baptiste Seroux d'Agincourt. He knew the encyclopaedists in Paris and inspired by their example decided to devote his life to a comprehensive study of medieval art because less was known about it than about classical art or modern art. His approach is described by the title of the six folio volumes that eventually appeared: Histoire de Part par les monumens depuis sa decadence au IVe siecle jusqu^a son renouvellement au XVIe. He studied the monuments very carefully, beginning with extensive travels in northern Europe, eventually settling in Rome in 1779. He insisted that his draftsmen make accurate copies, and for Fig. IJ. Vatican facsimile (1899) of the Vatican Vergil, f. 8v. BL, Facs. 72(1), f. 8v manuscripts he insisted that the engravers of his plates work from tracings of the miniatures. On the plate in which he published the Watering of the Flocks from the Vatican Vergil (fig. 14) he also gave a copy of Bartoli's engraving of the same miniature to demonstrate how much more faithful his was. Indeed, he did not permit any modernized details in the landscape and he reproduced the Renaissance annotation modo sic at the upper right. Although his great work was essentially ready for printing when the French Revolution broke out, printing was long delayed, and had only begun when Seroux died in 1814. Publication was completed in 1823 and the work remained in common use throughout the century. An Italian translation appeared in Prato from 1826 to 1829 with

32 engraved copies of the original plates; details were somewhat simplified and the linear quality made a little harsher. Another Italian translation appeared in Milan from 1825 to 1835 with a different set of plates copied from the Paris edition and signed by Giovanni Carattoni (fig. 15). These are still clumsier and more harshly linear than the Prato plates and really betrayed Seroux's intentions, but unfortunately they are the ones that were reprinted in Mantua in 1841, in Frankfurt and Berlin shortly afterwards for an abbreviated German translation, and in London in 1847 for a similarly abbreviated English translation. So it came about that many nineteenth-century readers used Seroux's great work only in its debased form. Meanwhile Angelo Mai, the Prefect of the Vatican Library, had published in Rome in 1835 a brief study of the illustrations in both the illustrated Vergil manuscripts in the Vatican, Virgilii picturae antiquae ex codicibus Vaticanis, with lithographs of all the illustrations by Carlo Ruspi. Although carefully drawn (fig. 16) and more attractive than Seroux's engravings, they are relatively deceptive in style; though not nearly as bad as the work of Bartoli, they reveal a little too much of the style of their time. Seroux's more self-effacing draftsman is generally more reliable, but Ruspi carried the day and his lithographs are sometimes reprinted for convenience even today. The modern era of photographic reproduction arrived for the Vatican Vergil only in 1884, when Pierre de Nolhac published an important pioneering article on the two illustrated Vergils accompanied by six fully satisfactory plates in heliotype from the Vatican Vergil and two from the Codex Romanus, all at full size.^" This was followed in 1897 by his excellent monograph on the Vatican Vergil,"^ a landmark in the development of what is now called codicology, but with only one plate because a full facsimile was then being prepared by Franz Ehrle, the Prefect of the Vatican Library. That appeared in 1899 as the first volume in the Library's series of facsimiles,^" but it was a shameful publication. The introduction was superficial and the plates were disastrous, for although the text was adequately reproduced the illustrations were printed from a separate set of plates that had been retouched to hide the damaged parts of the miniatures, and in the upper right part of fig. 17 even a careless defect in the photographer's negative. This was the modern equivalent of Bartoli's engravings that unlike his facsimile watercolours sought to make the miniatures more acceptable by improving their style. By comparison, for example, with the excellent photographic facsimile of the Utrecht Psalter that had been published in London as early as 1875 this was scandalously bad printing. A second edition in 1930 included valuable additions to the introduction by Giovanni Mercati, four rather poor colour plates, and tolerable black and white plates of the entire manuscript; it was reprinted at a noticeably inferior standard in 1945. It is ironic that the Vatican Vergil, which had been the subject of the first attempt to produce a facsimile in 1677, had to wait until 1980 before a proper facsimile in colour was published.^^

33 1 For a fully detailed account see the facsimile toniea', Psicon, viii-ix (1976), pp. 65-87, for full I ergilius Vaticunus, Codices selecti, lxxi; Codi- discussion of its dependence on the Vatican ces e Vaticanis selecti, xl (Graz, 1980), with my Vergil. commentary volume (Graz, 1984). My more 11 Suzanne Boorsch and John Spike, The Illustrated general and more accessible discussion of the Bartsch, vol. xxviii (New York, 1985), p. 68; Vatican Vergil will be published soon by the Bartsch, vol. xv (1813), p. 51, no. 8. University of California Press, and a German 12 Anthony Hobson, 'Two early sixteenth-century translation is planned to be published in Graz. binder's shops in Rome', in G. Colin (ed.), De 2 Sec in general Bernhard Bischott, 'Die Hof- libris compactis miscellanea (Brussels, 1984), bibliotek Karls des Grossen' in Wolfgang pp. 79-98, has identified the binder of the Braunk'ls (ed,), Karl der Crossc, Lchensirerk und manuscript as Paolo di Bernardino Bancheii, Niichlcben (DCisseldorf, 1965), vol. ii, Das who is documented as working for various papal geistige Leben, pp. 42-62, especially pp. 46, accounts from 1505 to 1524. Nicole Dacos, in the 61-2. supplementary remarks added to the revised 3 For a detailed discussion see my article 'When edition of her Le logge di Raffaello: maestro e the Vatican Vergil was in Tours', in Studien zur bottega di front e alPantico (Rome, 1986), p. xxvi, mittelalterlichen Kunst 800-1250: Festschrift has announced her attribution of these drawings fiir Florentine MUtherich zum 70. Ceburtstag to the young Pierino del Vaga but she has not yet (Munich, 1985), pp. 53-66. published a full account of her opinion, which, I 4 The Carolingian imitation Rustic capital text in understand from several specialists, is not likely the Leiden Aratea was repeated on the same to gain wide acceptance. pages in the thirteenth century in Gothic book 13 Antonio Agustin cites 'las pinturas del Virgilio hand. See Erwin Panofsky, 'Renaissance and del Cardenal Bembo' for a detail of costume in Renascences', Kenyon Review, vi (1944), pp. his Dialogos de medallas, inscricwnes y otros 201-36, especially p. 224 (later expanded in antiguedades. Opera omnia (Lucca, 1774), vol. book form: Stockholm, i960). viii, p. 58. 5 See my monograph Codicological Notes on the 14 I have investigated this problem in more detail in I 'ergilius Romanus, Studi e testi (Vatican City, in a paper given at the colloquium 'Cassiano dal press}, pp. 37-42- Pozzo's Paper Museum' at the British Museum 6 The attribution of this work to a French scribe and the Warburg Institute in December 1989, of the Hrst decade of the fifteenth century is the due to be published shortly by Olivetti. conclusion of Gilbert Ouy of the C. N. R. S. in 15 The first title page on relatively thin paper has Paris, reported in further detail in my com- no watermark. The second title page has no mentary volume, pp. 37-8. watermark but seems to be on the same heavier 7 Orsini, who liked to boast of the provenience of paper as the rest of the book, where the usual his books, first recorded this claim in the watermark is IHS surmounted by a cross and inventory of his library. Vat. lat. 7205, f. 52V. enclosed in a slightly elongated circle 55 mm. No such book figures in the inventory of books high; cf. Edward Heawood, Watermarks Mainly given by Pontano's daughter to the church of S. of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Hilversum, 1950), Domenico in Naples two years after his death; no. 2974. see Erasmo Percopo, Vita di Giovanni Pontano 16 The British Library has a copy of this rare (Naples, 1938), pp. 124-5 and 313-14- edition without any title page and bound badly 8 Konrad Oberhuber, The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. out of order: 562*.e.20. The Bancroft Library xxvii (New York, 1978), p. 105; Adam Bartsch, of the University of California at Berkeley Le peintre graveur., vol. xiv (Vienna, 1813), recently bought a copy of the 1741 diplomatic P- 314, no. 417. edition of the Medici Vergil, which was 9 Oberhuber, vol. xxvi (1978), p. 240; Bartsch, published in Florence, in which the original vol. xiv, p. 195, no. 243. owner inserted at appropriate places severely 10 Marco Fabio Calvo, Antiquae urbis Romae cum trimmed sheets from the 1677 edition of Bartoli's engravings. regwnibus simulachrum (Rome, 1527); see Pier Nicola Pagliera, 'La Roma antica di Fabio 17 The Cicognara collection at the Vatican has both Calvo, note sulla cultura antiquaria e architet- a proof copy of this edition without captions

34 (VIII.ir2oA) and a regular copy of the book as nunc Florentiae in Bibliotheca Mediceo-Laurenti- published (VIII.1120B). ana adservatur bono publico typis descriptus anno 18 Antiquissimi Virgiliani codicis fragmenta et MDCCXLI. Florentiae. Typis Mannianis. picturae ex Bibliotheca Vaticana ad priscas 20 Pierre de Nolhac, 'Les peintures des manuscrits imaginum formas a Petro Sancte Bartoli incisae, de Virgile', Melanges d'arche'ologie et d'histoire Romae ex chalcographia R. C. A. apud pedem (Ecole fran^aise de Rome), iv (1884), pp. 305-33- marmoreum, A.S. MDCCXLI. During the 21 Pierre de Nolhac, 'Le Virgile du Vatican et ses course of the press run for this book the names peintures'. Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la of some of the figures in the illustrations were Bibliotheque Nationale et autres btbliotheques, added to the engraved plates; the copy in the XXXV (1897), pp. 681-791. Warburg Institute does not have them, but the 22 [Franz Ehrle], Fragmenta et picturae Vergiliana copy in the British Library does. codicis Vaticani Latini j22s, Codices e Vaticanis 19 P. Vergili Maronis codex antiquissimus a Rufio selecti, i (Rome, 1899). Turcio Apronio V. C. distinctus et emendatus qui 23 See n. i.