Manuscript on parchment of Caesar, Bellum Gallicum, translated into Italian by Pier Candido Decembrio in 1438. With Dedication of the translation to Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan.
Description:
Binding: Date? Italy. Vellum case with title in ink on spine: "Cesare Comment". Gilt, gauffered edges and gold and cream silk endbands. Fragments of a printed service book with musical notation partially visible under pastedowns., Elegant illuminated title page (f. 2v) with the title, written in blue over an erasure, in a circular wreath, green with gold flowers, and framed by narrow gold bands with fillets and inkspray issuing from the top and bottom with blue and deep red flowers, green leaves and gold balls. Full border, f. 1r, white vine-stem ornament on blue, green, deep red and gold ground between thin gold frames. In lower border, medallion, blank, framed by wreath, green with yellow highlights and narrow deep red frame. Partial border, f. 3r, white vine-stem ornament on blue, green and deep red ground between narrow gold frames, enlarged to elongated dots at terminals; white vine-stem ornament extends into upper (trimmed) and lower margins, with single gold balls with hair-line strokes. 8 large initials, 11- to 3-line, gold on blue, green, gold and deep red ground with white vine-stem ornament shaded with pale pink. First few words of each book in gold; incipits, explicits and marginalia in red., and Script: Written below top line in a bold round humanistic hand by a single scribe who added extra rulings in outer margins for headings, annotations, etc., in red. Additional annotations in humanistic cursive, in a brighter shade of red.
Subject (Geographic):
Rome--History, Military--265-30 B.C
Subject (Name):
Caesar, Julius
Subject (Topic):
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval, Literature, Medieval--Translations, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Manuscript on parchment (palimpsest) of 1) Francesco Barbaro, De re uxoria, with his dedicatory preface to Lorenzo di Giovanni de' Medici. 2) Leonardo Bruni, Oratio Heliogabali ad meretrices. 3) Plato, Crito, the first version of the Latin translation by Leonardo Bruni (1420s). 4) Xenophon, Apologia Socratis, translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni. 5) The ps.-Virgilian Epistola Virgilii ad Maecenatem written by Pier Candido Decembrio as a young man in 1426; he had difficulty convincing his contemporaries that it was not genuine.
Description:
Binding: 19th-20th centuries, Germany (?). Case bound with leaves from a parchment manuscript (Breviary, France, 1250-1300). On the front pastedown: rubrics for the major feasts and their octaves occurring in late June (John the Baptist, 24 June) through mid-August (Assumption, 15 August), and the beginning of the lessons to be read within the octave of the feast of John the Baptist; on the back pastedown: end of the lessons for Hilarianus of Arezzo (7 August) and beginning of the second lesson for Cyriacus, Largus and Smaragdus (8 August)., Illuminated initial of poor quality, f. 1r, 7-line, gold (almost completely rubbed), with red penwork filigree and small stylized leaves, with some touches of gold. At the top of the page, beneath rubric, arms of the Rustichelli family (per pale, or, a lion rampant sable; or, 4 bars nebuly sable), surrounded by red penwork. Plain initials in red and blue. Headings in red. Some small initials touched with yellow. Off-set impression of eyeglasses on ff. 33v-34r., Purchased in 1957 from H. P. Kraus by L. C. Witten, who sold it in 1959 to Thomas E. Marston., and Script: Written in humanistic bookhand by a single scribe, above top line.
Subject (Topic):
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval, Latin literature, Medieval and modern, Literature, Medieval--Translations, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library