Ovid (43 BCE - 17/18 CE)
A leaf from the Metamorphoses, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Italy, c.1300].
A handsome witness to one of the most widely-read and influential works of classical literature: Ovid’s Metamporphoses, the text of the present fragment covering the Gold, Silver and Bronze Ages from the Four Ages of Man.

c.325 × 260mm. 19 full lines in a large, rounded Gothic script, some glosses, the text from Metamorphoses 1.105-148: ‘Cornaque et in duris here[n]tia mora rubetis [...]’ to ‘Filius ante diem patrios inquirit in a[n]nos’ (creased and browned from use as a binding fragment, some fading and smudging to text on the recto, a few wormholes).

Provenance:
Colker MS 530, acquired from Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), his I/129 inscribed in pencil on upper of verso. A second pencil inscription on recto reads ‘BMR Misc 2’.

Manuscripts of the Metamorphoses are extremely rare on the market. The present leaf must have come from a very handsome, formal copy of the text. A genre-busting mythological poem, the Metamorphoses remains one of the most influential works in Western culture, and deeply impacted the works of authors such as Dante Alighieri, Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare. It was extremely popular throughout late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and is represented by over 400 surviving complete or fragmentary manuscripts.

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