Ɵ Terence, Heauton Timorumenos, in the humanist script of Giuliano di Antonio of Prato

Ɵ Terence, Heauton Timorumenos, in the humanist script of Giuliano di Antonio of Prato, in Latin verse, fine manuscript on parchment [Italy (probably Florence), c. 1450-1460] Single leaf, with single column of 30 lines (including Act II, Scene 2 of Heauton Timorumenos, the 'Self-Tormentor') of the fine humanist minuscule of Giuliano di Antonio of Prato, with few abbreviations or ligatures, rubrics in pale red capitals, the readings for different characters marked in same pale red capitals, occasional textual corrections (one in a contemporary hand definitely not that of the main scribe), noticeable grain pattern to parchment (as common with humanist manuscripts), small spots and stains, slight discolouration at edges, else in excellent condition, 252 by 177mm.; in cloth covered card binding Provenance:1. The parent manuscript, a collection of the works of Terence, was written in Florence, c. 1450-60. The script was first attributed by A.C. de la Mare to the Florentine scribe 'Messer Marco', but she later revised this opinion and identified it as the work of the accomplished scribe Giuliano di Antonio of Prato (see her 'A Livy copied by Giacomo Curlo dismembered by Otto Ege', Interpreting and Collecting Fragments of Medieval Books, 2000, at p. 57, n. 1).2. The codex was owned in the fifteenth or sixteenth century by a 'Petrus Colom', and the leaf with his inscription is now at Rutgers University.3. The incomplete parent volume of 103 leaves was offered by E.P. Goldsmidt, cat. 23 (1930), no. 14, then reappearing as Sotheby's, 28 May 1934, lot 100, bought by Marks (of 84 Charing Cross Road), presumably on behalf of Dawson's, bookdealers of Los Angeles.4. Otto Ege (1888-1951), who bought this from Dawson's in 1935 (see de Ricci, 1937, and Gwara, 2013), dispersed by September 1936, and apparently shared with Philip C. Duschnes.5. The present leaf re-appearing in Sotheby's, 26 November 1985, lot 78, to Quaritch, their cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 117.6. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, part of their MS. 648 (along with another leaf from the same parent manuscript, ex. Ferrini and sold in the Schøyen sale in Christie's, 10 July 2019, lot 456, for £1500). Text:Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, c. 190-159 BC.) was one of the great early Roman comic playwrights. This work, the Heauton Timorumenos, most probably drew on Menander's lost play of the same name, and is based on a typically Terentian comic motif of a complex deception and double plot of two young lovers whose affairs are closely interwoven. It opens with the author's famous imploring of his audience to judge a play by its merits rather than the opinions of critics, and was first performed in 163 BC. He need not have worried about its reception, and Horace (65-8 BC.) speaks of packed houses for Terence's plays, while Varro (116-27 BC.) had clearly enjoyed a performance and could describe the costume of Menedemus, one of its main characters. Parts survive of four manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries, and no less than five Carolingian examples. In total, approximately 650 manuscripts survive from the year 800 onwards (see M.D. Reeve in Texts and Transmissions, 1983, pp. 412-20). Script:This is a particulary finely executed and appealing example of Italian humanist script, a script created in the second half of the fourteenth century through the emulation and refinement of the bookhands of what its designers thought were 'Roman' or Classical manuscripts, with all their connotations of antiquity and textual authority, but in fact predominantly those of the Carolingian and Romanesque periods. Like Carolingian minuscule, which it chiefly emulates, the introduction of humanist script was also driven by ease of legibility, and a letter survives sent by Petrarch at the age of sixty-two and with failing eyesight to his friend Boccaccio, recording that he had commissioned his Epistles to be copied not in the usual script of the period that could tire the eyes of the reader, but in "littera ... castigata et clara" ('neat and clear letters'). Published:S. de Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States, 1937, II, p. 1947, no. 65.S. Gwara, Otto Ege's Manuscripts, 2013, his HL 78.