Conference paper

Geymonat, Ludovico V.;, Carmassi, Patrizia:

Early-Medieval Drawings from a Twelfth-Century Palimpsest

A 32-page palimpsest was recently uncovered by Patrizia Carmassi in the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. The folios of parchment were reused in the first half of the 12th century to copy the Bellum Civile by Lucan. UV photography reveals that the undertext is an extraordinary set of drawings and miniatures. They include two centaurs, a large cross, full-page standing figures, strings of saints, an angel lifting a body to heaven, two large decorative borders of acanthus scrolls and elaborate architectural backdrops. The variety in subjects and proportions and the seemingly different drawing techniques suggest that the works were not conceived as part of a single undertaking. On the basis of codicological, paleographical and documentary evidence, Patrizia Carmassi investigates the history and provenance of the codex. Ludovico Geymonat proposes to link some of the drawings in the scriptio inferior to classical sources. In looking at this newly-discovered and still unpublished material, the paper explores how the gathering together of the drawings in the palimpsest is significant both for the interpretation of single folios and for an understanding of the functions and uses of drawing in the transmission of images and ideas.


Ludovico Geymonat is Marie Curie Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome. He holds a PhD from Princeton University (2006) and a BA from the Università di Torino. His research centers on drawing, monumental programs and the role of space in visual communication. He has published on 13th- and 14th-century Venetian painting and sculpture, the Baptistery at Parma and the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch.


Patrizia Carmassi studierte von 1982-1988 klassische Philologie an der Università degli Studi di Pisa. 1992-1997 folgte das Studium der Mittelalterlichen Geschichte, historischen Hilfswissenschaften und Latein an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, mit einem Stipendium im Graduiertenkolleg „Schriftkultur und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter“. Promotion im Fach Mittelalterliche Geschichte. 1997-2007 bekam Carmassi Verschiedene Forschungsstipendien, in Frankreich, Italien, USA. 2007-2010 bearbeitete sie das DFG-Projekt "Katalogisierung der Halberstädter Handschriften". Seit Oktober 2011 ist sie Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im DFG-Forschungsprojekt "Marquard Gude (1635-1689) und seine Handschriften. Provenienzgeschichte, Klassikerüberlieferung und Sammlerinteressen in den Codices Gudiani", Kooperationsprojekt des Zentrums für Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitforschung der Universität Göttingen und der Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.