Retrieving Figures Under the Script

Codex Guelf. 125 Gud. lat. at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel contains the epic poem Bellum civile by the Roman poet Lucanus, a regular brown script, a Carolingian minuscule typical for the beginning of the 12th century, and beautiful decorated initials in red and green. On a few pages of the manuscript, when one looks closely, faint traces of drawings peer out from behind the script, barely visible to the eye. A range of advanced techniques including photography with sided-light and UV-light, microscopic examination, and multispectral imaging have revealed that the folios had an entirely different life before the text of Lucanus was copied onto them.

In particular, multispectral analysis has made it possible to recover the otherwise lost content of this composite manuscript, two quires of which are made of reused parchment. Using this technology reveals many figures like saints, animals, constellations, and decorative motifs such as acanthus scrolls, initials and architectural structures. The drawings that emerge underneath the writing date back to the time before c. 1100. The nature of the drawings raises intriguing questions: What was the intended use? Where were they made?