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PLATE 16

Vienna Dioscurides
fol. 3v Seven Physicians

The series of frontispieces begins with two collective pictures, each showing a
set of seven famous pharmacologists. The most prominent in the second picture
is Galen, who sits in the center as the only one in an easy chair. He is flanked by
Crateuas to his right and Dioscurides to his left, both raising hands as a gesture
of speech. The pair in the middle zone are Apollonius Mys and Nicander. A
paraphrase of the latter's treatise on snake bites is part of the Vienna codex
(Figure VII), and he is shown here holding out a plant to a serpent. At the
bottom sit Andreas and Rufus, the presumed author of the carmen de herbis
(Plate 19).
The choice of seven pharmacologists and their being grouped together is

clearly inspired by the concept of the Seven Wise Men as they appear on
ancient floor mosaics, sitting on a semi-circular bench. Yet compositionally our

miniature cannot derive from such models: it is clearly composed of individual,

quite self-contained portraits, for whose chairs there was not enough space;

thus the figures are rendered sitting on slabs or rocks. For most if not all of
them, models must have existed in the form of frontispieces to their treatises. It

is significant that the two miniatures with the gathering of the pharmacologists
are the earliest we know in which figures are placed before a solid gold ground.

There is no reason to doubt that they were executed by the same artist who
painted the dedication miniature, who was capable of working in different
modes depending on the nature of his models, and who made innovations, like

the gold ground, leading the way toward a more abstract concept of space,

whereas the individual portraits (e.g., Plate 17) have firmly maintained a class-
ical style.