Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD) - photo 1
Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD) - photo 2
Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD) - photo 3
Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD) - photo 4
Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD) - photo 5

Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD)

Lot 8
11.12.2024 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1349716
Lot 8 | Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD)
Estimate value
£ 50 000 – 80 000
Ovid (43BC - 17 or 18 AD)
The Gladstone Metamorphoses, in Latin, manuscript on paper [Italy, first half 15th century]
A fine humanist copy of one of the most influential works in Western culture: Ovid’s genre-busting mythological poem The Metamorphoses.

344 x 240mm. i + 254 leaves, complete, collation: 1-1610, 178, 18-2510, 266, 23 lines, ruled space: 285 x 116mm, blank spaces for rubricated capitals which have not been inserted, near-contemporary marginal and interlinear glosses throughout, sporadic maniculae in margins (some light marginal spotting and occasional dampstains, f.141 mostly loose, small section of the edge of f.2 repaired, marginal tear f.182, overall in excellent condition with clean, wide margins). Contemporary wooden boards (original leather removed from spine, clasps and catches lacking). Fitted brown morocco case.

Provenance:
(1) The watermark matches Piccard 16, Abtlg. 2, Nr. 175, which is localisable to Udine, 1421. Script, near-contemporary annotations and binding form a matching pair with the Gladstone Aeneid: evidently the original owner had commissioned these two cornerstone texts of classical literature from the same manuscript scriptorium.

(2) William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister (1809-1898): Hawarden Castle library label, MM II 6.


Content: Metamorphoses, ff.1-251v: Book I f.1, II f.18, III f.37, IV f.52v, V f.68v, VI f.82v, VII f.97v, VIII f.115v, IX f.134, X f.150v, XI f.166, XII f.182v, XIII f.195v, XIV f.215v, XV f.233; blanks ff.252-254v.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the greatest work by one of the most important poets of Latin literature, complete with all 15 books, and with annotations by an early hand. The Metamorphoses is a panoramic mythological epic written in dactylic hexameters which draws from various literary genres to tell the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar and constitutes one of the most important sources of classical mythology. Both a commentary on the political and social milieu of Augustan Rome and the poet's place within it and a product of the traditions of Hellenistic metamorphic mythology, it was composed shortly before Ovid's exile to Tomis in 8 AD (for carmen et error, 'a poem and an error', according to the author himself). Ovid refers to his Metamorphoses in his great exilic composition Tristia 1.1.117–120: ('sunt quoque mutatae, ter quinque volumina, formae / nuper ab exequiis carmina rapta meis [...]'), where he speaks of the fifteen books of his epic that have been saved from the metaphorical funeral pyre, and casts his own exilic situation as another metamorphoses.

The text of The Metamorphoses has come down to us complete, although it is preserved in a tradition of relatively late date. Extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages, as testified by the 400 and more surviving complete or fragmentary manuscripts, it had a lasting influence on later art and literature, inspiring authors like Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Cervantes, occasioning re-writings and reinterpretations, as with the 14th-century Ovide moralisé, and serving as the inspiration for the Renaissance paintings of Titian, and Mozart's first opera.

Complete copies of the text are extremely rare on the market.
Place of origin:Italy, Europe
Auction house category:Books and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
11.12.2024 – 11.12.2024
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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