L'arte de la medicina de le bestie.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Author/Creator:

Vegetius Renatus, Flavius.

Contributor:

Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Mulomedicina

Language:

Italian

Latin

Subjects (All):

Horses--Diseases--Early works to 1800.

Horses.

Horses--Diseases.

Veterinary medicine--Early works to 1800.

Veterinary medicine.

Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions--Early works to 1800.

Medicine.

Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions.

Genre:

codices (bound manuscripts)

treatises

Manuscripts, Renaissance.

Penn Provenance:

Coat of arms of owner effaced, leaving the initials GE (f. 1r).

Sold by Les Enluminures (Paris and Chicago) to Lawrence J. Schoenberg, Nov. 2006.

Deposit by Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2011.

Gift of Barbara Brizdle Schoenberg, 2021.

Physical Description:

92 leaves : parchment ; 209 x 147 (150 x 114) mm bound to 216 x 156 mm

Place of Publication:

[Ferrara?, Italy], [between 1450 and 1475]

Language Note:

Italian, in Tuscan dialect.

Summary:

15th-century copy of the first Italian vernacular translation of a 5th-century Latin treatise on veterinary medicine, focusing on horses, mules, donkeys, and cattle. 16th-century notes added at the end (f. 91v-92v) include medicinal recipes for a woman in pain and a donkey or ass with a fever.

Notes:

Ms. codex.

Title from opening rubric (f. 1r).

Foliation: Parchment, i (modern paper) + 92 + i (modern paper); 1⁶ 2² 3-5¹⁰ 6⁸ 7-10¹⁰ 11⁸(-2); [1-92], modern foliation in pencil, upper right recto.

Layout: Written in 32 long lines; frame-ruled, with vertical bounding lines in lead and horizontals in faint ink.

Script: Written in humanistic minuscule, with later additions by a 16th-century hand at the end of the volume (f. 91v-92v).

Decoration: 6 illuminated initials in a style suggesting origins in northern Italy, likely Ferrara (Les Enluminures), in pink, green, and blue on gold grounds, all but one with decorative extensions of leaves, flowers, and gold disks in margins marking the beginning of each book (Book 1, 4 lines, f. 1r, and 3 lines, gold letter on multicolored ground, f. 2r; Book 2, 5 lines, f. 24v; Book 3, 8 lines, no marginal extensions, f. 42v; Book 4, 2 lines, gold letter on green ground, f. 52v; Book 5, 5 lines, f. 79r); concentric painted and gold circles in lower margin of first page for coat of arms, effaced (f. 1r); numerous 2-line initials alternating between red with purple flourishing and blue with red flourishing; paragraph marks in red or blue; rubrication in red; chapter numbers in red roman numerals in tables of contents for Books 1 (f. 23v-24r), 3 (f. 42r-42v), 4 (f. 51v-52v), and 5 (f. 78v-79r).

Binding: Modern parchment over pasteboard.

Origin: Written in Italy, possibly Ferrara, between 1450 and 1475 (Les Enluminures).

Publications about:

Herman, Nicholas. Making the Renaissance Manuscript: Discoveries from Philadelphia Libraries (exh. cat.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries, 2020. 258-69 (cat. 81).

Cited as:

LJS 484.

OCLC:

782048619

Online:

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative Fund Home Page