MINIATURIST, Italian
(active 600-620 in Italy)

Naples Dioscorides

600-20
Manuscript (Vind. Gr. 1), 290 x 250 mm
Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Naples

This ancient Greek codex, which is imperfect at the beginning and end, is a Herbal, that is a text which deals with medicinal plants. Many such texts were inspired, although generally indirectly, by the work of Pedanius Dioscorides, (born c. AD 40, Anazarbus, Cilicia — died c. 90), Greek physician and pharmacologist whose work De materia medica was the foremost classical source of modern botanical terminology and the leading pharmacological text for 16 centuries. Dioscorides described all the known medicines derived from plants (he included approximately six hundred), animals and minerals. The Naples manuscript diverges from this model, for it deals only with plants.

The illustrations are painted in the upper half of the recto of the leaves, with the text laid out in two or three columns in the lower half. Rather than being scientific in aspect, like the text of Dioscorides, The Naples Herbal takes the form of a manual or didactic compendium, in which the plants are arranged in alphabetical order and carefully illustrated. Neither the scribe nor the artist concerned has been identified. The type of script, the annotations, and the style of the miniatures suggest that it was produced in Italy at the beginning of the seventh century.

On folio 90 recto the Mandrake is illustrated.




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