Miniature from the Vatican Virgil, Antique Chromolithograph, 1849

A pastoral scene of three shepherds and their flocks under trees, painted in the late antique manner with its shadows and its sense of open air still intact, and framed in a band of crimson and gold. The sheet is lettered as a fifth century miniature taken from the works of Virgil in the Vatican Library at Rome, with the names of the shepherds, Menalcas, Damoetas and Palaemon, printed in gold capitals on the red panel beneath the picture.

The plate belongs to the second volume of Lacroix and Sere's Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance, Paris, 1849, a work that set out to describe the manners, trades, sciences, letters and fine arts of Europe between the fall of Rome and the end of the sixteenth century. Each sheet was drawn from the original object or manuscript and printed in chromolithography, a process still new in 1849 and here used with unusual richness.

This is the Vatican Virgil, one of the three or four oldest illustrated books to survive from the ancient world, and the plate is probably the earliest subject in the whole volume. The warm red and green of the frame make it a strong decorative sheet, and the classical subject widens its appeal well beyond buyers of medieval material.

Even age toning. Marked handling soiling along the bottom, left and right edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.