The Ambrosian Iliad, also known as Ilias Picta, is one of three surviving illuminated manuscripts from antiquity depicting classical literature, and the only one to recount Homer’s epic. The manuscript was created in the late fifth or early sixth century C.E., either in Constantinople or Alexandria, and has enraptured audiences since its creation. It contains 52 different illustrations accompanying the epic’s text, in what scholars believe to be one of the earliest examples of manuscript illumination.
Many of the illustrations show the names of places and characters, but some are perhaps more “illuminating” than others. As Kurt Weitzmann writes in his book, Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination, the illustrations also “show a considerable diversity of compositional schemes, from single combat to complex battle scenes.” The breadth and variety of these depictions, in Weitzmann’s mind, imply that Homer’s epic had already accrued an extensive history and undergone multiple stages of development by the time the Ilias Picta came into fruition
