Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868

Description

The manuscript was made at Corvey in about the year 825 by a scribe named Hrodgarius. The illustrations were made by three artists, one of them was named Adelricus.

It is an example of Carolingian art, but the illustrations follow an antique model. The Latin text was edited by Christoph Stiegemann and Matthias Wemhoff.

The Vatican has digitized the manuscript and added it to its online library, DigiVatLib, as a part of its project to provide free, online access to the Vatican Library's collections of manuscripts and incunabula.

The archetype of the codex

Since the end of the 19th century many scholars tried to estimate the age of the model from which Vaticanus 3868 was copied. According to Weitzmann the latter is a most faithful copy of a late classical original manuscript. On the basis of the art-historical data the original manuscript was dated to the 5th century by Weitzmann, Koehler, and Mütherich. The artist was schooled in the Greco-Asiatic manner. This point of view dominated before World War II.

In the 1960s another more detailed art-historical analysis was made. The pictures of female masks were compared with three female masks dated between the years ca. 242ca. 267. The hairstyle of the Terence portrait is close to the one favoured by emperors between the years 238 and 249, suggesting that models from which the codex was copied were made in the 3rd century.

References

;Citations ;Bibliography

References

1. {{harvnb. Morey. 1931
2. Dodwell, Charles Reginald. (2000). "Anglo-Saxon Gestures and the Roman Stage". Cambridge University Press.
3. "Vat.lat.3868 {{!}} DigiVatLib".