Antoine Calvet's 2014 review article in Kritikon Litterarum addresses the critical edition of De Arte Chimica, a short Latin text attributed to Agrippa that was first printed in the seventeenth century and has been a source of bibliographic uncertainty ever since. The attribution to Agrippa is doubtful — the text does not appear in contemporary sources and was not included in any edition of Agrippa's works published during his lifetime — but it circulated under his name and contributed to his reputation as an alchemical authority.

Calvet's review discusses the editorial methodology of the edition, the manuscript tradition of the text, and the question of attribution. He notes that the alchemical doctrine of De Arte Chimica is broadly compatible with the natural-philosophical framework of DOP Book I, which discusses transmutation and the theory of metallic generation in terms consistent with Paracelsian and Aristotelian alchemy. Whether this compatibility points to genuine Agrippa authorship or merely to the use of Agrippa's authority by a later compiler is a question the review addresses without fully resolving.

For students of the DOP, the review is useful for its documentation of the uncertain relationship between Agrippa and the alchemical tradition. Unlike Paracelsus, who is centrally identified with Renaissance alchemy, Agrippa's relationship to alchemical practice is peripheral and contested. The DOP discusses alchemical theory but does not constitute a practical manual; the spurious De Arte Chimica is precisely such a manual, which may explain why it was attributed to Agrippa by those who wanted to give it authority. The review contributes to the documentation of this attribution tradition and its unreliability.