La storia nei margini. I disegni dell’Orosio Vat. lat. 3340 tra eredità tardoantica e creazione medievale

The Historiae adversus paganos by Paulus Orosius was one of the most widely read and studied works of the medieval period; it was also one of the least illustrated. Vat. lat. 3340 is the most ancient example of an “Orosius pictus” known. It was copied in the Beneventan script and illustrated with 77 marginal drawings accompanied by explanatory annotations. The manuscript poses a series of as yet unanswered questions. Were the illustrations already planned at the time of the codex's creation, or were they added later? When and where were they executed? Is one dealing with copies or original works? The rather muddled mise en page and frequently feeble links between text and image, which makes reading a challenging task, seem to suggest a misalignment between the manuscript and its accompanying illustrations. If we accept that Vat. lat. 3340 was produced at Montecassino before 1075, the drawings must date to (at least) the first thirty years of the 12th century. The drawings do not bear any resemblance to miniatures produced at Montecassino at the time the manuscript was produced. The only possible comparisons which can be drawn are with the carved ivory plaques produced in the same period on Campania's Tyrrhenian coast. In any event, wherever the creator of the illustrations worked, clearly he was not an amateur, as David Ross (1953) contended. It is impossible to prove that the drawings were copied in totality from an earlier version of the Historiae; neither can it be shown that entire blocks of images "migrated" from other illustration traditions. However, there are some hints that suggest an adaptation of Late Antique models in Orosian drawings, particularly in the rendering of individual iconographic schemes and the narrative strategies employed.