Non extinctus est fons musarum: the production and dissemination of Greek scientific illustrated manuscripts in the late Palaeologan period and after 1453, lecture by Francesca Marchetti, Ling’s College London, March 24, 5:30–6:30 pm

Among the most intriguing evidence of the Byzantines’ interest in scientific knowledge is a considerable number of manuscripts produced in the last decades of the Empire showing illustrations of botanical and medical subjects. This group of manuscripts seems to escape easy classification: it includes roughly illustrated iatrosophia, luxurious albums of botanical representations, and various collections of medical subjects enriched with interlinear and marginal pictures whose content often extends to magic and astrology.

Francesca will aim to show how contacts with western scholars and universities, different approaches to the production of manuscripts, and the fascination exerted by ancient lavishly illustrated botanical and medical manuscripts kept in hospital libraries, all contributed to the transmission of a visual heritage that also had a significant impact on western medical manuscripts and printed books.

Francesca Marchetti obtained an MA in Art History at the Università degli Studi di Firenze and completed her PhD at the Università di Bologna in 2011 on an illustrated Byzantine iatrosophion (cod. 3632, Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna). She obtained a fellowship at the Università di Bologna (2007-2010) and was fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut- Max Plank Gesellschaft in Florence in 2006 and at the Institut für Byzanzforschung in Vienna in 2009. Her main research interest is in the tradition of illustrated medical manuscripts in Byzantium and in the West, and in the role of illustration as medium for the transmission of knowledge in the pre-modern era.