medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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"Bill Schipper" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Authorial self-portraits are not that uncommon.
not at all.
a long tradition, going back, we presume, as i said previously, to
antique authors, though the oldest examples are lost to us, of course.
one of the earliest surviving is this one, i believe :
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/Picts/Ezra2.gif
as i understand it (and it's been quite a few years since i even looked at
this material) the tradition survived and flourished in Italy and Byzantium,
perhaps never completely dying out further West (e.g., the Evangelist
"Portraits" in insular mss), but really had a comeback in the wave of
Greek-inspired mss produced during Big Chuck's "Renaissance".
>A good example might be Hrabanus Maurus, who appears in two dedicatory images
at the front of the Vatican library copy of In honorem sanctae crucis (Vat lat
124), presenting his book to St Martin, and to the pope.
sound's like a happy conflation of author- and donor-portrait.
>Plus he appears (and is self-identified) kneeling at the foot of the cross in
the last carmen figuratum in In honorem, but looking towards the left of the
page, and hence back to the entire cycle of poems.
again, an author portrait, albeit a rather unusual one.
there is no question of my ROTBERTVS, however :
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/mss/fleurymss/chartresms29-244v-rotbert.jpg
being an *author* --he's there at the end of a Latin copy of Josephus.
now, it's something of a supposition, i suppose, to say that he's a scribe,
and perhaps even that the "ROTBERTVS" this fellow is writing on the book in
front of him is the name of the fellow himself --but both those suppositions
seem rather reasonable, to me.
by default, if nothing else (i.e., what else *could* he be ; and who else
*could* the name refer to ??).
i'm perfectly willing to seen this "Scribal Portrait" as being based
("modeled") on the much more common "Author Portrait" tradition, but am just
curious as to how common "Scribal Portraits" are and in what manuscript
lineages they are found, if common at all.
>There's a hard-to-find book on self portraits in early MSS, by
Joachim Prochno, Das Schreiber- und Dedikationsbild in der deutschen
Buchmalerei, I. Teil: bis zum Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts (800-1100),
Leipzig/Berlin 1929, with a number of images from a variety of manuscripts.
There are earlier Greek examples as well.
thanks for this obscure reference.
I.U. doesn't have this one, but does have something by the same author which
might be even more scarce, being published in 1943 :
Prochno, Joachim. _Das Böhmische Landesarchiv Prag; seine Geschichte und
Bestände._ Prag, Druckerei des Protektorates Böhmen und Mähren, 1943. 34
p.
probably not a bestseller, that one.
interesting publisher, though.
another AlGore : Close, but no Cigar.
thanks for your thoughts, Bill.
best from here,
christopher
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