A perfume maker?

[Carl Lavoie]

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From an oldish (1998) Sotheby’s catalogue, this b/w shot of a small painting with the title: "An Alchemist in a Courtyard."

Really atypical for this type of picture, for it is neither the chaotic vessels strewn place of a bumbling fool at his furnace, nor the dimly lit room of a studious philosopher poring over his tome, athanor at his elbow.

Here we have an open scene. On the right-hand side, a vista of flower gardens. On the left, a clean, spacious, orderly laboratory. On the foreground, distillation taking place at an almost commercial scale.

Now the museum curators and the auction catalogue compilers have that tendency of labeling any painting with a vial in it an ‘alchemy' scene.

A physician examining to the light the urine of his patient: "Alchemist […]"
A quack surgeon performing a trepanation has two bottles on his shelves? "Alchemist […]"

Anyway, what do you make of this image? I was leaning for a depiction of a perfume maker (as the artist choose to depict the rose (?) bushes and some cut flowers on the table.) But it could be a lot of things. Bruce T. Moran, in his Distilling Knowledge (2005) has a whole chapter on ‘Alchemy in Artisan and Daily Life.'
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