ullapool, scottish highlands

Photo by Ishikoro. Japan,2022.

Renee Gailhoutet - Jean Renaudie, Ivry sur Seine social housing, 1969-75

The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century CE work, De materia medica (Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς : Perì hylēs iatrikēs in the original Greek) by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text. After residing in Constantinople for just over a thousand years, the text passed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in the 1500s, a century after the city fell to the Ottomans.

The 491 vellum folios measure 37 by 30 cm and contain more than 400 pictures of animals and plants, most done in a naturalistic style. In addition to the text by Dioscorides, the manuscript has appended to it, the Carmen de herbis attributed to Rufus, a paraphrase of an ornithological treatise by a certain Dionysius, usually identified with Dionysius of Philadelphia, and a paraphrase of Nicander’s treatise on the treatment of snake bites.