Manuscript, Historia naturalis, Italy (Rome), ca. 1460-1470.

Foliation: parchment. i-ii (18th-century parchment, I conjoint with pastedown) + 525 + iii-iv (18th-century parchment, a bifolium) ff.

Number of lines: 44 lines of text and one line of running title.

Language: Latin.

Script: humanistic (possibly by Iacopo della Pergola).

Textual content:
f. 1v: Extract from Suetonius, De viris illustribus. Note on Pliny and beginning of the Historia naturalis.
ff. 2r-525r: Historia naturalis in 37 books.
ff. 2r-3v: Preface.
ff. 4r-19r: List of chapters and authorities of all 37 books (the chapter headings listed in book 1 do not correspond to the headings above the chapters in the 37 books themselves).

Decoration: 37 large initials on panels attached to borders of white vine interlace on gold, blue, green and red grounds which extend down one side of the margin (35 historiated - ff. 2r, 20r, 42r, 54v, 65r, 77v, 94v, 110v, 127r, 140v, 155v, 174r, 183r, 191v, 200v, 209r, 225v, 245r, 271r, 285r, 305r, 321r, 333v, 346r, 361v, 375v, 389r, 400r, 419v, 430r, 441r, 450r, 461r, 472v, 485r, 499v, 512v); terminals of borders in the form of small gold sunbursts and flowers; numerous small emblazoned initials on coloured grounds; rubrics in red and blue.

Artists: The larger part of the illuminations is commonly attributed to the ‘Miniatore dei Piccolomini’, active from the early 1460s. Other artists such as Giuliano Amadei, Liberale da Verona, Gioacchino de Gigantibus have been suggested for other parts of the manuscript, as well as the Sienese illuminator Gioacchino Semboli, but this attribution is still very much debated.

Binding: 18th-century binding, reddish-brown morocco, gold-tooled on both covers with a large diamond panel within a rectangular border; both panel and border outlined with a triple row of fillets tooled in blind.

Accompanying material: Letter from Alessandro Lisini, 1907, attributing historiated initials to G. Semboli, inserted inside cover.

(1) Written in Italy for Gregorio Lolli Piccolomini in the 1460s (arms on ff. 1v, 375v, 441r, 485r).
(2) Inscription in an 18th-century archival hand beneath the front and rear pastedowns.
(3) Bought by the South Kensington Museum in 1896 from Martin Nijhoff (The Hague).

The Natural History, written around AD 77 by Roman author Pliny the Elder described the natural work in thirty-seven books ranging from astronomy to geology, from zoology and botany to human physiology. Some arts, such as painting and sculpture are also included, as they draw their raw materials from nature. This work was a major influence on medieval encyclopaedias by authors such as Isidore of Seville or Vincent of Beauvais.
This copy was made in the 1460s in Rome for Gregorio Lolli Piccolomini, as indicated by the coat of arms painted on two pages where the arms of the Lolli and the Piccolomini families are combined (ff. 375v-458r). Gregorio Lolli was a cousin of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini and was appointed papal secretary in 1459, nearly one year after Aeneas became Pope Pius II (1458-1464). Both shared a humanist education, and Gregorio’s copy of Pliny’s Natural History is very close to manuscripts commissioned by his cousin. It embraces the humanistic aesthetic: written in a humanistic script, more legible than the Gothic script, its borders and initials are decorated with so-called white vine ornament, a trademark of humanistic manuscripts.
The first historiated initial, introducing the preface, shows Pliny, crowned with laurels, seated in a landscape with a book in his hand. Each subsequent book is introduced by a scene evoking its content. The book on painting, for instance, begins with an initial showing painters at work and an assistant grinding colour pigments on a stone (f. 485r).

MSL/1896/1504