Le pagine ornamentali del Codex Vindobonensis 847

The codex Vindobonensis 847 is a rare example of sixth-century decorated Gospel book. This manuscript, containing the Rufinus of Aquileia’s De benedictionibus patriarcharum, opens with ten decorated pages. The first nine are fragments of an original Greek Gospel book, which were attached to the front of the Latin manuscript of Rufinus. The two parts of the codex were probably made in a single bilingual workshop in Ravenna. Taking into consideration the unexhaustive literature on the subject since the late nineteenth century, this paper explores the decoration of the initial pages of the Tetraevangelium: the wreath frontispiece, which is also repeated at the beginning of Rufinus’s text, the title page and the remaining Eusebian canon tables. The findings allow a better understanding of the adaptation of Greek elements into the decorative tradition of manuscript production of the Latin West, simultaneously highlighting connections with compositional formulas distinctive of the early medieval book illumination.