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    Plate 11 Vergilius Romanus

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    janari64
    The miniatures in the Vergilius Romanus show early signs of moving away from a classical painterly style towards more linear abstraction in human forms and abandonment of natural spatial relationships. The first miniature still shows remnants of classical style with a cowherd and goats depicted, but attempts to show space are almost desperate. While the manuscript is pretentiously large, the illustrations try to make up for weakness in human form with large scale. A second artist takes over illustration and has a very different background and training, moving further from classical traditions.

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    Plate 11 Vergilius Romanus

    Uploaded by

    janari64
    186 views2 pages
    The miniatures in the Vergilius Romanus show early signs of moving away from a classical painterly style towards more linear abstraction in human forms and abandonment of natural spatial relationships. The first miniature still shows remnants of classical style with a cowherd and goats depicted, but attempts to show space are almost desperate. While the manuscript is pretentiously large, the illustrations try to make up for weakness in human form with large scale. A second artist takes over illustration and has a very different background and training, moving further from classical traditions.

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    Weitzmann_Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination

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    The miniatures in the Vergilius Romanus show early signs of moving away from a classical painterly style towards more linear abstraction in human forms and abandonment of natural spatial relationships. The first miniature still shows remnants of classical style with a cowherd and goats depicted, but attempts to show space are almost desperate. While the manuscript is pretentiously large, the illustrations try to make up for weakness in human form with large scale. A second artist takes over illustration and has a very different background and training, moving further from classical traditions.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    186 views2 pages

    Plate 11 Vergilius Romanus

    Uploaded by

    janari64
    The miniatures in the Vergilius Romanus show early signs of moving away from a classical painterly style towards more linear abstraction in human forms and abandonment of natural spatial relationships. The first miniature still shows remnants of classical style with a cowherd and goats depicted, but attempts to show space are almost desperate. While the manuscript is pretentiously large, the illustrations try to make up for weakness in human form with large scale. A second artist takes over illustration and has a very different background and training, moving further from classical traditions.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 2

    52

    PLATE 11

    Vergilius Romanus
    fol. lr Eclogues

    Whereas the illustrations of the Vergilius Vaticanus (Plates 1-4) and the Milan
    Iliad (Plates 7-10) are still deeply steeped in a painterly classical tradition,
    those of the Vergilius Romanus show the beginnings of a process of linear

    abstraction in the design of the human body and the abandonment of natural
    spatial relationships.

    The very first miniature, heading the First Eclogue, still shows remnants of a
    classical style: Tityrus the cowherd sits at the left under a wide-branched tree

    and contentedly plays his flute, while three cows peep out from behind the tree;

    Meliboeus the goatherd, in agreement with the text, leads one of the goats by
    its horns. Other goats peep out from behind a tree at the right, showing the art-

    ist's almost desperate attempt to save the appearance of a spatial setting. At the
    same time, the unique lack of a frame still shows adherence to the tradition of

    papyrus illustration.

    On the one hand, this is a pretentious manuscript written in an artificial

    uncial twice the normal size, and on the other, it is illustrated by artists who try

    to balance weakness in the design of the human body by an unusually large


    scale, giving to the miniatures a monumentality which is somewhat in contrast

    to the intimacy of the subject.

    The artist who begins the illustration maintains some adherence to natural
    human proportions and freedom of motion and gesture. With the second minia-

    ture, another artist, of a very different background and training, takes over.
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    11

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