# Giovanni Marcanova: Collectio antiquitatum [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MINIATURIST, Italian]() - Date: 1451-1500 - Technique: Manuscript \(Ms. lat. 992\) ## Commentary Giovanni Marcanova: Collectio antiquitatum 1465 Manuscript \(Ms. lat. 992\) Biblioteca Estense, Modena The manuscript contains descriptions of a number of Roman monuments. It begins with 15 full-page drawings in brown ink with a golden-brown wash. The drawings show Roman antiquities, many of which are brought together or rendered in the manner of "fantasy architecture." The text of the Collectio antiquitatum describes and enumerates the monuments and places of ancient Rome, including temples, triumphal arches and columns, obelisks, palaces, public baths, gates, roads, bridges, fortifications, hills, and other points of historical interest. Drawings in the text \(also in brown ink, some with a golden-brown wash\) depict ancient monuments, sarcophagi, vases, aedicules, and stele with inscriptions, as well as several Renaissance seals with mottos. The text was composed by Giovanni Marcanova \(c. 1415-1467\), a Paduan humanist, who began the work in Padua and completed it in Bologna in 1465. He dedicated it to Domenico Malatesta Novello, the Lord of Cesena. Some of the drawings are attributed to Marco Zoppo, a painter active in both Bologna and Venice. The drawing on folio 27, illustrated here, shows two buildings, one circular and the other a basilica-shaped structure surmounted by a spiral column. The foreground is occupied by a fruit and chicken market. A young naked man on a high pedestal in front of the crenellated walls holds up a basin full of fruit. ## Related artworks - [Alessandro Cortesi: Poem]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphoner]() - [Antiphoner]() - [Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics]() - [Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics]() - [Armiranda]() - [Aulus Gellius: Noctes Atticae]() - [Averulino: On the Architecture]() - [Baldo Martorelli: Grammar]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()