Imago - EVANGELIARIO DI HITDA - 2023

An artwork of capital artistic and cultural importance, the Evangeliary of Hitda was created around the year 1000, during the height of what is called the Ottonian Renaissance. In addition to the excellence and quality of its contents, the Evangeliary of Hitda carries the distinctive value of a venture of the highest cultural and institutional profile; the facsimile, produced for the first time in the world, allows scholars and enthusiasts to know and appreciate a fundamental masterpiece of Western art, spirituality, and culture.

In terms of breadth, quality, and originality of the images, the codex, kept at the Darmstadt University Library, is considered fundamental to the history of Western illumination; but the element of greatest originality and cultural interest lies in the unprecedented importance of the female figures involved in its creation and present in the extensive iconographic corpus, starting with Abbess Hitda to whom the patronage and the title of the work are owed.

The creation of a facsimile involves perfect reproduction of the most important literary masterpieces of all time, including the irregular shapes of the pages, the texture of the sheets, the reproduction of the texts and images, the application of gold leaf, the hand stitching and binding of the covers.

The work starts from ultra-high-resolution photographs taken directly at the places that house the codices, followed by a meticulous study of the details and the reproduction of the sheets using the most advanced printing techniques.

Subsequently the works are completed with a series of manual interventions that thus achieve the maximum fidelity of the reproduction of both supports and contents.

Each facsimile is accompanied by the commentary, a collection of essays of high scientific standing that allow one to know the content, the history, and the value of the reproduced codex.

Each copy of the Evangeliary of Hitda is accompanied by the commentary gathering the studies of esteemed experts such as Maria Giovanna Fadiga and Alessandro Giovanardi and is housed in a velvet box enriched by an original panel depicting the Maiestas Domini.

The Imago and Opera certificates guarantee the authenticity, the limited edition, and the high cultural and patrimonial value of the work.

Limited edition:

Format: 22 cm x 29.3 cm
219 sheets
Application of gold leaf
Hand-treated parchment paper to achieve the optimal aging state
Leather binding crafted by hand
Hand stitching
Mounted on antique paper
Leather cover with the four evangelists on gold leaf applied by hand and brass frames

Sixty-five decorated pages, in which the panels with narrative and symbolic figures are presented on twenty-four pages fully illustrated with lavish use of gold leaf. Each scene is surrounded by a colorful and elaborate border. To these panels is added the exquisite ornamentation spread across the other pages: gold inscriptions on a purple background, a finely crafted initial, twelve delicate miniatures in which the ten Eusebian canons are housed, showing the peculiarities of the four Gospels.