Images Emerging from Vials. A Study of the Pictorial Language of Alchemy in the Early Modern Period

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Stefan Laube
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Early Modern History ; Art History ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 299932894

Two pictorial genres of alchemy are at the centre of the project: (a) At the same time as the printing press was invented, printed alchemical books began to include frontispieces. As programmatic statements of popular appeal, the frontispiece indicates the book’s contents and seeks to rouse interest. (b) The pictorial language of alchemy is concentrated in the telling image of the vial that serves as a convenient stage for the transmutation. In the first field of investigation, the focus is on the outward representation of alchemical knowledge, while in the second the iconic potential of the core area of alchemical theory and practice is explored. While illustrated title pages are usually the result of technical reproductions, the pictorial language of vials draws on models in illuminated manuscripts, so that the media change between manuscript and print can come into view. In a third field of research (c), the intersections of the title image and the vial image will be examined. Set within the parameters of the histories of knowledge, images and media from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 18th century the project aims at establishing a systematic survey of alchemical iconography and its development. The world of alchemical imagery combines transparency and opacity, closeness to nature and abstraction to form a complex and dynamic unity. The key question is raised as to whether images only illustrate what has already been fixed in the text medium or whether they can generate and convey meaning and knowledge largely independently from the text. If printed title and vessel images can primarily be obtained from sources of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, the holdings of external institutions must be checked for handwritten records.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants