Classical Manuscript Illustrations

by Claridge, Amanda; Herklotz, Ingo

• ISBN13: 9781905375769
• ISBN10: 190537576X
• Edition: Illus.
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-20
• Publisher: Isd

Summary

The 'Museo Cartaceo' ('Paper Museum') is a collection of some 10,000 watercolours, drawings and prints, assembled during the seventeenth century by the Roman patron and collector Cassiano dal Pozzo and his brother Carlo Antonio. It represents one of the most significant attempts before the age of photography to embrace human knowledge in visual form. The collection documents ancient art and culture, architecture, zoology, botany, geology and social customs, and provides us with a major tool for understanding the intellectual concerns of a period during which the foundations of our own scientific methods were established. This volume will reproduce 160 drawings, mostly copied from the four most celebrated ancient manuscripts in the Vatican Library - the Vatican Vergil and Terence, the Roman Vergil and the Palatine Agrimensores . Surviving documentary evidences enables at least three of the copies to be dated precisely, and sheds light on why they were made: principally to facilitate Cassiano's study of both the characters depicted in the original works and of ancient costume and artefacts.