Thomas Wijck's painted alchemists at the intersection of art, science, and practice
Date
2016
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries represent an alchemical “Golden Age,” a
time of growth and discovery for alchemy’s diverse practitioners. During this era,
alchemists were engaged in a wide array of commercial enterprises, from mining to dye
and pigment manufacture to the production of chemical medicines. Alchemical treatises
circulated across a broad spectrum of society, from artisans and tradesmen to scholars
and princes. The term “laboratory” emerged during this period as a specific descriptor of
sites of chemical inquiry—indicating alchemy’s importance to the history of science as a
whole. Yet despite its past ubiquity and utility, alchemy has since borne negative
associations with magic, occultism, delusion, and greed, and alchemical imagery has in
turn suffered misinterpretation or obscurity.
Many modern interpretations of alchemical art centralize Pieter Bruegel the
Elder’s 1558 satirical print, The Alchemist, a scene that lampoons vain hopes for
transmutated gold; others focus on the mess and disorder of the pictured workshop as
signs of alchemy’s failures. Yet the popularity of alchemical scenes swelled during this
period, particularly in the Dutch Republic, where they were produced in large numbers.
The diversity of these images indicate a similarly diverse range of responses to alchemy,
ranging from skepticism to respect, delight and curiosity.
The alchemical paintings of Thomas Wijck (1616-1677) present a substantial
body of laboratory imagery—as well as a remarkable challenge to narratives of greed and
folly. Wijck’s painted laboratories model domestic harmony, scholarly study, and expert
knowledge of materials. Rather than charlatans or dupes, his alchemists are respectable
and scholarly artisans who pursue intellectual and empirical work. In representing
alchemists as artisans, Wijck reframes alchemy in the context of the familiar, as well as
socially and economically vital, artisanal workshop. His images further emphasize the
practices and products of the laboratory, presenting colored powders and raw materials
that epitomize the desirable and useful alchemically created pigments, dyes, and
medicines that circulated widely in the early modern marketplace. Wijck’s choice to
depict his alchemists as makers of artists’ materials, rather than seekers of gold or cures,
is a remarkable one. It affirms the connections between his subject matter, his practices as
a painter, and his place within a Netherlandish art-theoretical tradition that linked
alchemy and experiment to artistic virtuosity.
Wijck’s international success, and his connections to elite communities engaged
in natural philosophical experiments, shed new light on the market for alchemical
pictures and other “modern” genre scenes of emerging empirical disciplines. His
specialization in alchemy further indicates its utility as a tool for fashioning an artistic
identity rooted in curiosity, ingenuity, and transformation. As a painter, and particularly
as a painter in oils, Wijck was connected to a legacy of experiment in workshop process,
as well as concerns for mimesis, naturalism, and material change. The work of artists, like
the work of alchemists, contained intellectual-creative and manual-material aspects.
While the work of alchemists and painters might be considered artisanal, both alchemists
and artists claimed a special status owing to their creative powers. Alchemy shared
deeper connections (and rivalries) with art-making, centering on the replication of nature.
Wijck’s formation of an artistic and professional identity around alchemical themes
indicates his desire to explore this curious territory, and ultimately to demonstrate art’s
superior claims to knowledge of the natural world.
Description
Pages 330-459 missing from PDF. "All images removed due to copyright"--p. 329.