Cicero, De Oratore and Orator

Description: 

Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore (1-115r)
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Orator (115r-150v)

Italian, ca. 1450

Language: Latin

vellum
height 26 cm
width 18 cm

The manuscript contains 150 leaves of vellum and two front and three back flyleaves, all of paper. Also contains four large illuminated initials and 104 smaller initials.

University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archives
Edward Burgess Manuscript Collection, Ms. 12

 

Diebold, William. The Illustrated Book in the Age of Printing: Books and Manuscripts from Oregon Collections. Portland, OR: Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, 1993, p. 18 - Quoted with permission

Although a finely produced book, with regular script and wide margins, this copy of two of Cicero's works on rhetoric is dearly not as lavish as number 3 [in Diebold catalog cited below]. The two manuscripts do have much in common: both are written in a regular Humanistic minuscule and have similar initials, with the unpainted parchment showing through to make up the vines and leaves. In this manuscript, however, a simple yellow paint has been used to substitute for the thick gold leaf used in number 3. Only on the first page of this book (not on display) is there an initial painted in gold; number 3 has such initials every few pages.

Protocol: 
University of Oregon - Public Access
Community: 
University of Oregon
Category: 
Manuscripts and Manuscript Illuminations
Creator: 
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and author, 106 BCE-43 BCE)
Rights: 
Image reproduced with permission from University of Oregon Library. The institutions that house the specific Medieval Portland objects ultimately hold the rights to their image and reproduction; the images are provided here as a courtesy by those institutions and are for non-profit, educational use only.
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