Dioscorides describing the mandrake. Oil painting by Ernest Board, 1909.

An adaptation of the painted portrait of Dioscorides that appears in the Juliana Anicia manuscript of his writings (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex Vindobonensis medicus Graecus 1, fol. 4v, dated to the 6th century AD). In the manuscript, Dioscorides (identified by his name in Greek) sits on the left, gesturing towards a mandrake plant (labelled "mandragora" in Greek) held by a seated woman on the right: the woman is a personification of Discovery, as indicated by the word "Heuresis" in Greek inscribed above her. In a second identification inscribed near the top of the sheet, Dioscorides' name is repeated, but the woman is identified as "hē sophia", or a personification of wisdom. In the present painting, Board has turned the allegorical subject of the Juliana Anicia portrait into a narrative scene, and has added a man on the left who is creating a brush-drawing of the mandrake plant

A similar depiction had been produced in 1866 by E. Tournois, whose composition was engraved on wood by C. Laplante and published by Louis Figuier in his Vies des savants illustres, Paris 1866, facing p. 354: it may have served as a reference source for the present painting by Ernest Board

1909

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 61 x 92 cm

Select images of this work were taken by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum: WT/D/1/20/1/17/28

Handbook of the Historical Medical Museum organised by Henry S. Wellcome, London 1913, p. 21, no. 46 ("Dioscorides, the Greek father of pharmacy, describing the mandrake, which the artist is depicting for his great work, "On materia medica" 1st or 2nd century B.C.")

Wellcome Collection 45905i

Exhibited in "Harry Potter: A History of Magic" at Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, 11 September 2021-7 November 2021 and Tokyo Station Gallery, 18 December 2021 -27 March 2022