F 205 inf. (S.P.10/22-26; gr. 1019) + F 205# inf. (S.P.10/26c; gr. 1020)
Description of the manuscript
The Codex Ambrosianus, F 205 inf. (S.P.10/22–26; Gr. 1019), known as the Ilias picta Ambrosiana, preserves 58 surviving miniatures on 52 loose parchment leaves. These are the remains of a lavishly illustrated copy of Homer’s Iliad, written in an elegant capital script. The style imitates the oldest round capital hand and is thought to have been produced in Alexandria, Egypt, at the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century AD.
Each image nearly matches the width of the mutilated text of the poem on the reverse, while their height varies considerably—from 53 mm to 155 mm. Scholars estimate that the original manuscript may have measured approximately 326 × 288 mm, with 25 lines of text per page and a total of 180 to 200 illustrations. Although the surviving scenes correspond to only short passages of the poem, they testify to an ambitious pictorial programme.
The miniatures appear to have been placed at the top or bottom of the pages containing the Greek text and were probably painted after the copying of the Iliad. Each scene is outlined by a blue band and an outer red border, except for two miniatures (IV and XXXIII) which display only the red frame.
The late antique text of the Iliad partly survives on the back of these painted leaves
In the 12th century, in southern Italy—presumably in the Calabrian or Sicilian area—these miniatures were cut out from the late antique manuscript leaves and glued vertically onto sheets of paper, Chartae Ambrosianae, 38 of which survive. These sheets measure approximately 227 × 165 mm and contain hypotheses and scholia written in two different hands. This is now codex F 205# (S.P.10/26c; Gr. 1020). Following Angelo Mai’s nineteenth-century intervention, the miniatures now constitute a separate unit from the iconic paratext.
Contents
- The text of the Iliad, which is preserved in fragmentary form on the back of the miniatures and comprises a total of 788 verses, cannot be evaluated in full due to its mutilation, which makes it difficult to place properly in the history of the text. However, it is evident that the manuscript contains omissions of verses. In addition to the absence of verses 8, 244 and 12, 432, the omissions of verses 8, 6 and 14, 402 are particularly notable. In these two cases, the Ambrosian text behaves in the same way as Venetus A.
The manuscript was annotated by several hands. The first annotations date back to the 6th or 7th century, and the second set of annotations dates to the beginning of the 10th century. The latter set of annotations is also responsible for the addition of breathings, accents, punctuation, and various marginalia.
- The medieval paper sheets contain a mixed collection of scholia from the D and h families—the oldest traces of which are preserved here—alongside extracts from Porphyry’s Quaestiones Homericae. The order of the scholia does not coincide with that of the poem’s verses, and the lemmas are presented in an irregular manner. The sheets contain ten Homeric hypotheses, which are always found at the beginning of the sheet. These are from books I, II, V, VI, VII, XV (with two different versions), XVI, XX, and XXI. In two of these (books I and II), the margin—although damaged—reveals that they are preceded by the book number in red ink. The hypothesis for the first book is preceded by the words ‘The stories of Homer from the first book of the Iliad’. The sheets also contain two extensive extracts from Euripides’ Rhesus (vv. 856–884) and Andromache (vv. 1–102).
- The miniatures are placed vertically alongside the paratext. They not only accompany it, but also influence the selection and arrangement of the exegetical materials. They feature medieval annotations and captions.
Short history of the manuscript.
Compiled in late antiquity and repurposed in the Middle Ages, the collection of images and scholia remained intact and became part of the vast library of the humanist Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601). However, it is unclear how it came to be there. One of the main collections of manuscripts and printed books of the second half of the 16th century, the library was purchased by Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631) for the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, arriving in 1609 and contributing to its oldest collection. After two hundred years during which it apparently attracted no attention, the manuscript’s fate changed thanks to Angelo Mai (1782–1854). Starting in 1810, Mai detached the miniatures from the paper sheets, dismantling the booklet and ultimately damaging and destroying some components in the process. Unfortunately, he left no description of the medieval manuscript, focusing his attention mainly on the miniatures and the late antique Greek text on which his monumental first edition is based.
Mai 1819 (editio princeps of the Ilias picta, excluding paratexts; republished in Mai 1835); Martini Bassi 1906, 1089 and Pasini 1997, XXXI–XXXII, no. 63 (description of the manuscript and catalogue update with bibliography); De Wit 1932 (medieval scholia and captions on the images); Bianchi Bandinelli 1953 (overall reconstruction of the Late Antique manuscript of the Iliad and iconographic study of the miniatures); Bianchi Bandinelli 1973 and Cavallo 1973 (dating and localisation of the copy from iconographic and palaeographic perspectives); Garzya 1986, part. XVI, note 1 (the verses of Rhesus in the paratext in the context of the critical edition); West, 1998, XXXVIII, and passim (a complete list of passages from the Iliad preserved on the back of the miniatures and their contribution to the critical edition); Palla, 2001 (observations on the text on the back of the miniatures); Rodella, 2003 and Nuovo, 2004 (on the Pinelli collection at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana); Palla 2004 (a palaeographical study of the paper sheets); Castelli, 2013a (the verses of Rhesus and their relationship with the miniature); Castelli, 2013b (the paratext on the paper sheets as the oldest witness to the scholia h); Castelli, 2016 (the presence of Porphyry’s Quaestiones Homericae in the paratext and its relationship with the images); Castelli 2020 (discusses the verses of Andromache in the paratext, their place in the tragedy tradition, and their relationship with the images).