Aeneid: MS McClean 164

Titles

Aeneid

Maker(s)

Author: Virgil
Scribe: Jacopo da Pratovecchio, Ser Guido di

Entities

• Other

Categories

• Illuminated manuscript
• Manuscript

Description

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Parchment, iii modern parchment flyleaves + i contemporary parchment flyleaf + 179 fols. (early foliation in brown ink) + ii contemporary parchment flyleaves + iii modern parchment flyleaves, 288 x 210 mm (190 x 90 mm), 28 verse lines ruled in plummet, catchwords, running headers in blue and red.

BINDING: Late nineteenth century, red tooled morocco over wooden boards, by Joseph W. Zaehnsdorf (1853–1930).

CONTENTS:
fols. 1v-2r Ps-Augustus Caesar, Disputatio ne liber Virgilii igne dissoluatur (Riese 1894-1906, II, no. 672)
fol. 2r Twelve-line verse summary of the Aeneid constructed from the first line of each Pseudo-Ovidian argumentum to the Aeneid (Shackleton Bailey 1982, 2-10)
fol. 2v Basilius, De xii libros Aeneidos (Riese 1894-1906, II, no. 634)
fols. 2v-179r Virgil, Aeneid, with apocryphal four-line opening (Ille ego quondam), Pseudo-Ovidian argumenta for each book (in the margin) and commentary Virgilius triplici stilo sua tria opera tractauit.

DECORATION: Twelve red and blue parted initials [7-9 ll.] with infill and extensions in red and purple pen-flourishing, for each book of the Aeneid; alternate red and blue initials [4-7 ll.] with purple or red pen-flourishing for introductory texts and the argumentum to Book 1; red or blue initials [2 ll.] with red pen-flourishing for subsequent argumenta written in the margins; alternate red and blue paraphs in the text; red paraphs in the gloss.

Notes

History note: Copied in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, in the second half of the fourteenth century (colophon fol. 179v); Georgio Antonio Vespucci (c.1434-1514), ownership inscription on fol. 179v and notes in his hand on fol. iv recto and fol. 179v; Ognissanti church, Florence (erased arms in the lower margin of fol. 3r); library of the Minutoli-Tegrimi family in Lucca (stamp DI CASA MINUTOLI TEGRIMI, fols. 2r and 179v; Frati 1933, 366); Ambroise Firmin Didot (1790-1876); his sale, Paris, June 1881, lot 4; Sotheby’s, London, July 1884, lot 252; labels from a sale catalogue describing this manuscript as lot 2239, with ink annotation: ‘S. W. + H. White Lib. April ’04’, attached to fol. i recto; Frank McClean (1837-1904); his bequest, 1904.