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adammclean Member
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Posted: Tue Jun 14th, 2011 09:47 pm |
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Alicja Rafalska-Lasocha, Wieslaw Lasocha, Anna Jasinska.
Cold light in the painting ‘Group portrait in the Chemist’s
House’ in
The Global and the Local: The History of Science and the Cultural Integration of Europe.
Proceedings of the 2nd ICESHS
(Cracow, Poland, September 6–9, 2006) / Ed. by M. Kokowski.
http://www.2iceshs.cyfronet.pl/2ICESHS_Proceedings/Chapter_30/R-Varia_III_Rafalska_Lasocha_Jasinska.pdfLast edited on Tue Jun 14th, 2011 09:47 pm by adammclean
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Rafal T. Prinke Member
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Posted: Tue Jun 14th, 2011 11:18 pm |
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I have overlooked this article -- there's another alchemical one in that collection of papers: on Sendivogius by Rudolf Werner Soukup:
http://www.2iceshs.cyfronet.pl/2ICESHS_Proceedings/Chapter_15/R-7_Soukup.pdf
The interpretation of the painting by Cornelis de Man is not very convincing to me but may still be correct (i.e. that the thing the child holds is phosphorus). According to this web page on de Man, the people depicted are the family of his cousin and his (cousin's?) son who ran a pharmacy "De Spiegel" at Wijnhaven.
http://kalden.home.xs4all.nl/dart/d-a-man.htm
Another website says the goups includes the painter himself (the standing man?).
Last edited on Tue Jun 14th, 2011 11:19 pm by Rafal T. Prinke
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Carl Lavoie Member
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Posted: Wed Jun 15th, 2011 05:15 am |
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The interpretation of the painting by Cornelis de Man is not very convincing to me but may still be correct
Same for me. The guests, ecstatic at the sight of the vial glowing ... in the crisp white daylight.
And I can’t imagine the man pointing at it receiving them in a dress-gown; can’t this blue robe be some kind of academic gown, some professorship distinction, perhaps a chair holder in the United Provinces at the time?
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adammclean Member
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Posted: Wed Jun 15th, 2011 10:38 am |
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Cornelis de Man has made a painting unambiguously on an alchemy theme.
The Alchemist's Workshop was sold at Christie's in 2001.Attached Image (viewed 1457 times):
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adammclean Member
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Posted: Wed Jun 15th, 2011 10:50 am |
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Rafal T. Prinke wrote:
According to this web page on de Man, the people depicted are the family of his cousin and his (cousin's?) son who ran a pharmacy "De Spiegel" at Wijnhaven.
I wonder if the laboratory/workshop depicted here can be a pharmacy. Most of the paintings, or engravings of pharmacies show rows of storage jars on shelves containing the various herbs and minerals. Here we seem to have laboratory set up for distillations.
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Carl Lavoie Member
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Posted: Wed Jun 15th, 2011 07:04 pm |
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The auction house site mention under ‘Litterature’ this issue of The Burlington Magazine, CXIII, March 1971, p. 228, fig. 71.
Maybe there will be informations regarding C. de Man’s other painting, the ‘Group portrait in the Chemist’s House’.
But not an article devoted only to the subject, it seems :
http://www.burlington.org.uk/magazine/back-issues/1971/197103/
.......................................................................................
About painting & alchemy :
Del Monte’s interest in this is manifest in the group of portraits that hung in his alchemical Casino, which are of the same seven luminaries who are illustrated in the titlepage of Oswald Croll’s Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt, 1609). We know that the Casino on the Pincio was the centre in Rome of the practice of iatrochymia or chemical medicine, although this kind of natural philosophy was increasing frowned on and may well have played a part in the damnation memoriae that Del Monte was subjected to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lute_Player_(Caravaggio)
Do these [painted] portraits still exist, and where are they kept ?
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Last edited on Thu Jun 16th, 2011 08:46 pm by alchemyd
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