Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 66, pp. 153-178, 2017/06/20
The illustrations of the two oldest, lavishly illustrated Byzantine collections of materia medica (the Vienna Dioscorides, cod. med. gr. 1, ÖNB, Wien, and cod. M.652, The Morgan Library and Museum, New York) were reproduced in several manuscripts between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth. This paper analyses a later manuscript (Cod. Banks Coll. Dio. 1, NHM, London) with copies of illustrations of the former, known by specialists but not yet studied in detail, and suggests to place its production in Constantinople shortly before the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Moreover, it highlights its relationship with two manuscripts produced in the following years (codd. Ee. V. 7, UL, Cambridge and C 102 sup., Bibl. Ambrosiana, Milano), and investigates the transmission of the dioscoridean iconographies during the late palaeologan period and their potential users.
