BMCR 2025.01.27

Botanical icons: critical practices of illustration in the premodern Mediterranean

, Botanical icons: critical practices of illustration in the premodern Mediterranean. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2024. Pp. 344. ISBN 9780226826790.

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The late antique and medieval illustrated manuscripts of Dioscorides’ pharmacological treatise De materia medica (1st cent. AD) represent a cultural masterpiece for the history of botany, medicine and art. It is hardly surprising that they have always proved a great fascination to historians of these disciplines as well as to philologists and even modern botanists. The most famous manuscripts are the Vienna Dioscorides (early 6th century), the Neapolitan (6th/7th century), and the New York manuscript (early 10th century). This last manuscript, until recently the least studied, was treated in detail by the author in his 2019 dissertation. This book is an expanded and magnificently illustrated version and is also aimed at a wider readership.

The central question of the study is: when and in which steps do the copyists of the illustrations strive for autopsia, the personal knowledge of the plant? Where do they interpret, improve or supplement the work of their predecessors? In eight chronologically consecutive chapters, not only the above-mentioned manuscripts, in particular the New York, are discussed, but also the scientific and social environment in which the herbaria were created, their precursors and the place they occupied in the history of medicine. One will not find a better outline of the state of research – and an excellently readable one as well – than this book. The first chapters deal with the “rootcutters” such as Krateuas, the (questionable) personal physician of Mithradates VI Eupator (1st cent. BC). As important sources for the older botany of the Greeks, Dioscorides, Pliny (both 1st cent. AD) and Galen (2nd cent. AD) are studied; the author traces the path of transmission via Byzantine compilers to the Arab scholars and translators of the 8th century. He also shows that the fate of the manuscripts is, as it were, a cultural history of Orient and Occident in nuce.

A possible misunderstanding is cleared up right at the beginning: a modern, botanically interested reader might assume that the illustrated codices were something like field guides with which doctors sought and identified medicinal plants. Rather, they were luxury manuscripts for a social elite as is clear from   the realities and expenses of complex book production, like the cost of parchment. Nevertheless, they are not limited to this: they are also testimonies to botanical history and art history and important transmitters of pharmaceutical texts. The social elites were particularly interested in such texts, as they were largely dependent on self-medication. For this reason, the plant portraits serve more than just aesthetic purposes. Their composition and the selection of morphological details are well thought out. With their help, the reader of the text would be able to relate the phytonym to a specific plant in nature.

Research on these manuscripts requires expertise in several fields that hardly anyone can cover in their entirety. This should be credited to the author and taken into account when he enters the vacuum between disciplinary boundaries. First of all, there is the philological aspect, as all of the plant illustrations are very closely related to texts. The author’s philological handling of texts, including the (sometimes absolutely necessary) correction of translations, is sound, with very few exceptions. In the decisive variant and pictorial representation of whether the fruits of kedros are larger or smaller than those of the cypress (pp. 178/292), the history of the text should be taken into account (as Sprengel[1] already did in 1830). On p. 18, in the context of the rootcutters, a source is dated to the 4th cent. CE, although it is a literal quotation from an author from the 1st cent. The printed Greek text is correct, and – as is no longer a matter of course today – errors in the accents are not worth mentioning (except in the case of botanē, p. 263). The equation of kerataía and kerátia (p. 293) is not correct; in the first case it is the tree, in the second the plural of its fruit (carob). Apart from this, the author is well acquainted with the philological state of research on the mss, especially the work of Marie Cronier.[2]

Central to the study of botanical illustrations is, of course, knowledge of general and specific botany, the latter including in particular a good knowledge of the species of the eastern Mediterranean—as this is the flora from which the illustrated plants originate. Griebeler has spared little effort in familiarizing himself with morphology, among other things. On p. 67, for example, a correct distinction is made between petals and tepals (a distinction that was, of course, unknown to the ancient botanists). Any botanist would agree with his identification of the conifer on p. 170 as Juniperus oxycedrus subsp. deltoides. In other cases, the botanist would arrive at different interpretations than the art historian: in the illustration of Antirrhinum on a wall, he would not think that this plant was actually believed to have no root (cf. p. 73), but that it characteristically grows on stone walls, as correctly depicted here.

On p. 67, it is debatable whether an illustrator deliberately omitted the flowers of the problematic plant symphyton, or simply did not know the plant at all, or only its vegetative characteristics. Opinions are also likely to differ as to whether the depiction of the ripe fruit is intended to reflect the teleological philosophy of Peripatos (pp. 175, 177) or is simply botanically necessary. As far as the identification of the plants portrayed is concerned, one should be more critical in some cases. It is clear (even to a layperson) that the illustration of lichens (Vienna Dioscorides fol. 216v) does not allow any identification at all. And yet the suggestions of 19th-century authors are reported with the orthographic errors from Mazal’s commentary (p. 260 note 72). To their credit, however, these authors do not refer to the illustration at all, but to the description in Dioscorides’ text. This is a fundamental problem with Mazal’s scientifically worthless commentary.It was unfortunate that the Griebeler did not check the details in Mazal before quoting from him.

The identification of the leaf added by the copyist of the New York ms. as that of Geranium robertianum seems dubious (pp. 148f.). The leaf morphology illustrated does not match any sp. of this genus. In my opinion, an Erodium sp. is depicted here. There have been several botanical attempts to identify all the plants of the Vienna and Neapolitan Dioscorides. The works of Emmanuel[3], Basmadjian[4] and Killermann[5] should be mentioned here in particular – which the author apparently does not know. The botanical database by Janick et al.,[6] with which the figures of the three mss. can be compared very quickly, also deserves to be mentioned.

The central chapter 7 argues against the widespread opinion in art history that “medieval people neglected to look and draw from nature for at least seven hundred years, if not longer” (p. 163). The first manuscript which, according to previous understanding, is supposed to show direct observation of nature is Egerton 747 (1280-1315). On the basis of several examples from the New York manuscript (and some other, also Arabic mss.), the thesis is convincingly supported that critical copyists were at work here and that the “start date” (p. 168) should be brought forward accordingly. Perhaps more examples or a quantitative analysis could have been provided here (without overwhelming the reader) as this is the innovative and right thesis of the study. There are also some additional insights, for example, plausible and astute explanations for many confusions of plants in the manuscripts (e.g. p. 143).

Botanical icons is a rich, stimulating and clearly written book, from which the expert can learn just as much as a reader without knowledge of the (enormous) state of research. Of course, the book offers many more good ideas and much more food for thought than can be acknowledged here. Has the history of this kind of “pre-modern botany” now come to an end? Griebeler concludes with a thought-provoking anecdote from the 1940s: a leading botanist from Kew visited the Holy Mount Athos to botanize. There he met the Brother Botanicus, who used his handwritten copies of Dioscorides to identify plants and learn their properties. Different worlds collide and Andrew Griebeler calls for both cultures to grow together again and learn to understand each other. His book makes a good contribution to this.

 

Notes

[1] Sprengel, K.: Pedanii Dioscoridis Anazarbei De Materia medica libri V. […] textum recensuit […] commentario illustravit. 2 vols. Lipsiae 1829–1830. His commentary in vol. 2 is still absolutely important.

[2] See among others Cronier, M.: Un manuscrit méconnu du ‘De materia medica’ de Dioscoride: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 652. In: Revue des études grecques 125 (2012), pp. 9-5130

[3] Emmanuel, E.: Etude comparative sur les plantes, dessinées dans le Codex constatinopolitanus de Dioscoride. In: Schweizerische Wochenschrift für Chemie und Pharmacie / Journal suisse de Chimie et Pharmacie 50 (1912), pp. 45–50 and 64–72.

[4] Basmadjian, K. J.: L’identification des noms des plantes du Codex Constantinopolitanus de Dioscoride. In: Journal Asiatique 230 (1938), pp. 577–621.

[5] Killermann, S.: Die in den illuminierten Dioskurides-Handschriften dargestellten Pflanzen (besonders Constantinopolitanus und Neapolitanus, ehemals Wien). Beitrag zur Geschichte der älteren Pflanzenkunde. In: Denkschriften der Regensburgischen Botanischen Gesellschaft. 24. N. F. 17. Regensburg 1955, pp. 3–64.

[6] Janick, J., Whipkey, A., Stolarczyk, J.: Herbal Images. Synteny of Images in Three Illustrated Dioscoridean Herbals. https://www.semanticscholar.org/reader/dd821612368c18bf60ba3d81ccdfa447923336dc