12-24-2022, 01:34 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-24-2022, 10:26 AM by Adam McLean.)
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The image of the alchemist in a cave-like laboratory, with manuscripts and glassware strewn about the floor, with a stuffed pufferfish hanging from the ceiling (a visual pun), has been a recurrent theme for the XVIIth-century Dutch and Flemish painters, with these satirical tableaux where the still life overlaps with the genre scene. Satirical because they purport to show a symbolic image of a disordered, confused mind. The capharnaum of the laboratory mirrors the chaotic mind of the souffleur. Two articles cover that in J. Wamberg (ed.), Art & Alchemy, (2006): ‘Alchemy and Its Images in the Eddleman and Fisher Collections at the Chemical Heritage Foundation’ (L. De Witt & L. Principe), and ‘Convention and Changes in Seventeenth-Century Depictions of Alchemists’ (J. R. Corbett.)
In literature, Chaucer and Jonson depicted obliquely and mockingly the chaos and confusion of alchemy, Balzac romanticized its Sisyphean task in La recherche de l’Absolu, but afterwards, there is very little. The most recent example that I can think of would be in a tale of Ligotti, about a deranged scientist whose mind caved in under the weight of contradictions:
“Thus, [he] unpacked several oddly shaped vessels decorated with strange glyphs and primitive images. And these clumsy vessels he rested upon a table among elegant containers of nearly invisible glass… More exotic or antiquated paraphernalia were revealed slumbering in crates and boxes: cauldrons, retorts, masks with wide-open mouths, alembics, bellows of different sizes, crusted bells that rang with dead voices, and rusted tongs that squeaked when manipulated; a large hourglass, a small telescope, shining swords and dull knives, a long wooden pitchfork with two hornlike prongs and a tall staff with marvelously embellished headpiece; miniature bottles of very thick glass plugged with stoppers in the shape of human or animal heads, candles in ivory holders with curious carvings, bright beads, beautiful convex mirrors of perfect silver, golden chalices engraved with intricate designs and powerful phrases; huge books with brittle pages, a skull and some bones; doll-like figures made of wax and wood, and various little dummies composed of obscure materials… And all these things the scientist brought together within his dim and drafty laboratory: each, in his mind, would play its part in his design.”
-Thomas LIGOTTI, ‘Mad Night of Atonement’, in Noctuary, 1994, pp. 104-5
The image of the alchemist in a cave-like laboratory, with manuscripts and glassware strewn about the floor, with a stuffed pufferfish hanging from the ceiling (a visual pun), has been a recurrent theme for the XVIIth-century Dutch and Flemish painters, with these satirical tableaux where the still life overlaps with the genre scene. Satirical because they purport to show a symbolic image of a disordered, confused mind. The capharnaum of the laboratory mirrors the chaotic mind of the souffleur. Two articles cover that in J. Wamberg (ed.), Art & Alchemy, (2006): ‘Alchemy and Its Images in the Eddleman and Fisher Collections at the Chemical Heritage Foundation’ (L. De Witt & L. Principe), and ‘Convention and Changes in Seventeenth-Century Depictions of Alchemists’ (J. R. Corbett.)
In literature, Chaucer and Jonson depicted obliquely and mockingly the chaos and confusion of alchemy, Balzac romanticized its Sisyphean task in La recherche de l’Absolu, but afterwards, there is very little. The most recent example that I can think of would be in a tale of Ligotti, about a deranged scientist whose mind caved in under the weight of contradictions:
“Thus, [he] unpacked several oddly shaped vessels decorated with strange glyphs and primitive images. And these clumsy vessels he rested upon a table among elegant containers of nearly invisible glass… More exotic or antiquated paraphernalia were revealed slumbering in crates and boxes: cauldrons, retorts, masks with wide-open mouths, alembics, bellows of different sizes, crusted bells that rang with dead voices, and rusted tongs that squeaked when manipulated; a large hourglass, a small telescope, shining swords and dull knives, a long wooden pitchfork with two hornlike prongs and a tall staff with marvelously embellished headpiece; miniature bottles of very thick glass plugged with stoppers in the shape of human or animal heads, candles in ivory holders with curious carvings, bright beads, beautiful convex mirrors of perfect silver, golden chalices engraved with intricate designs and powerful phrases; huge books with brittle pages, a skull and some bones; doll-like figures made of wax and wood, and various little dummies composed of obscure materials… And all these things the scientist brought together within his dim and drafty laboratory: each, in his mind, would play its part in his design.”
-Thomas LIGOTTI, ‘Mad Night of Atonement’, in Noctuary, 1994, pp. 104-5