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Alchemy, image and text - Paul Ferguson - 11-06-2023
Alchemy, image and text: the waning of alchemy and the decline of visual discourse in the late Renaissance
Adrian Holme, University of the Arts London.
From its obscure origins in antiquity the alchemical tradition enjoyed a late flowering in seventeenth-century Europe with the appointment of alchemists at
European Courts and a profusion of alchemical publication within the rapidlyexpanding output of printed books. . Alchemical literature employed a balance of text
and image, in which visual argument, using analogy, resemblance, emblem and allegory, complemented text... The question of why this system gave way, in the
late seventeenth century and ensuing Enlightenment to modern scientific and other serious discourse, progressively stripped of images, is discussed with
reference to the writings of Francis Bacon, Edmund Burke, Ernst Gombrich, WJT Mitchell and Marshall McLuhan.
Full text:
www.researchgate.net/publication/273525832_Alchemy_image_and_text_The_waning_of_alchemy_and_the_decline_of_visual_discourse_in_the_late_Renaissance