More from the storehouse of wonders that is the Getty Alchemy Collection at the Internet Archive. The illustrations here are from the 1678 edition of the Musaeum Hermeticum, a lengthy collection of alchemical texts with engraved illustrations by Matthäus Merian (1593–1650). Merian’s illustrations are some of the most frequently reprinted of all those you’ll find in alchemical books of this period, and justifiably so, he had a knack for presenting the allegories of the alchemical process in an elegant and detailed manner that’s also gloriously strange. The same quality of strangeness can be found in his other major alchemical work, Atalanta Fugiens (aka Scrutinium Chymicum). Browse Musaeum Hermeticum here or download it here.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• A triangular book about alchemy
• Alembic and Ligier Richier
• Atalanta Fugiens
• Splendor Solis revisited
• Laurie Lipton’s Splendor Solis
• The Arms of the Art
• Splendor Solis
• Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae
• Cabala, Speculum Artis Et Naturae In Alchymia
• Digital alchemy
A renaissance etiquette guide, is my theory.
Whoops, now I remember making much the same comment when you posted on alchemical illustrations at the beginning of 2013.
What I love about this whole graphical tradition is the care lavished on each etching. The basic concept could just as well have been transmitted by a couple of stick figures, but instead you find every illusionistic technique at work to depict the symbolic scene as plausibly as possible.