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{"queries": ["list of materials mentioned in the book with relation to alchemy and artisanal culture", "materials used in alchemy and artisanal workshops", "metals, stones, pigments, and substances in alchemy and art technology", "materials referenced in alchemical recipes or artisanal practices", "50 materials in alchemy and artisanal culture"]}
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relatively cheap and humble materials into highly valued objects of art. These
objects were all products of the arts of fire, which according to Vannoccio
Biringuccio (1480–c.1539) included alchemy, and excluded “false alchemy”
concerned with pretentious transmutation.2
In the background of Van Utrecht’s painting, a window opens on to a space in
which a man stands working at a stove with an open fire. Stirring a cauldron, the
man is shown in the material company of bellows, an anvil, a melting and a
distilling furnace, and other equipment related to the worlds of assaying and
metallurgy. Van Utrecht’s background refers to the spaces in which the objects in
the foreground were produced. Were these spaces laboratories or artisanal work-
shops? Were they home to gold- and silversmiths, glassmakers or producers of
porcelain? The difference between workshops and laboratories during this period is
ambiguous, not only in Van Utrecht’s depiction, and the line between the two
spaces is as difficult to draw as that between the arts of fire and alchemy. This book
is concerned with the interconnections and differentiations between foreground and
1My discussion of Van Utrecht’s painting in this and the next paragraph is based on Göttler,
“The Alchemist, the Painter.”
2 For Biringuccio’s attitude towards alchemy, see Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 128–32.
vii
background in Van Utrecht’s painting, between artisanal workshops and alchemical
laboratories, between the material arts and alchemy.
Van Utrecht is one of the heirs of Van Eyck (c.1390–1441). Following Giorgio
Vasari (1511–1574), Karel van Mander (1548–1606) portrayed Van Eyck as an
alchemist and likened his invention of oil paint to alchemical experimentation.3
According to VanMander, Van Eyck experimentedwith varnishes and binding agents,
“and found after much investigation that pigments mixed with such oils became
malleable and dried hard, and having dried became impermeable, and that the oil
made colours livelier, and that they themselves became lustrous without varnishing.”4
It turns out that Van Eyck did not invent oil paint, and neither was he an alchemist.
Nevertheless he would never have been described in those terms had not artists
and alchemists both been considered agents of material transformation. Van
Mander’s description of Van Eyck’s experimentation also reminds us that painters
and alchemists shared materials, and that painters used artificially created pigments,
“made by alchemy” according to Cennino Cennini (c.1370–c.1440). However, this
Fig. 1 Adriaen van Utrecht, Allegory of Fire, 1636 (Courtesy of Royal Museums of Fine Arts of
Belgium, Brussels (Photo: J. Geleyns))
3 Davis, “Renaissance Inventions.”
4Mander, Het schilder-boeck, 199v. Translation in Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon, 79.
viii Introduction
book is not concerned with travelling materials and shared material culture.
Shifting the focus from painting to the decorative arts, this book scrutinizes
epistemic exchanges between producers of the arts of fire and alchemists.
Laboratories and Workshops
What can the evolution of the laboratory, and its shifting relation to the artisanal
alchemist and likened his invention of oil paint to alchemical experimentation.3
According to VanMander, Van Eyck experimentedwith varnishes and binding agents,
“and found after much investigation that pigments mixed with such oils became
malleable and dried hard, and having dried became impermeable, and that the oil
made colours livelier, and that they themselves became lustrous without varnishing.”4
It turns out that Van Eyck did not invent oil paint, and neither was he an alchemist.
Nevertheless he would never have been described in those terms had not artists
and alchemists both been considered agents of material transformation. Van
Mander’s description of Van Eyck’s experimentation also reminds us that painters
and alchemists shared materials, and that painters used artificially created pigments,
“made by alchemy” according to Cennino Cennini (c.1370–c.1440). However, this
Fig. 1 Adriaen van Utrecht, Allegory of Fire, 1636 (Courtesy of Royal Museums of Fine Arts of
Belgium, Brussels (Photo: J. Geleyns))
3 Davis, “Renaissance Inventions.”
4Mander, Het schilder-boeck, 199v. Translation in Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon, 79.
viii Introduction
book is not concerned with travelling materials and shared material culture.
Shifting the focus from painting to the decorative arts, this book scrutinizes
epistemic exchanges between producers of the arts of fire and alchemists.
Laboratories and Workshops
What can the evolution of the laboratory, and its shifting relation to the artisanal
workshop, tell us about epistemic exchanges between the arts and alchemy? In the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the term laboratorium uniquely referred to work-
places in which “chemical” operations were performed: smelting, combustion,
distillation, dissolution, and precipitation. Matteo Martelli has convincingly
shown that no such term was available in Antiquity.5 The Papyri, containing recipes
for the production of a range of luxury goods, and the earliest texts on alchemy,
used the terminology of specific crafts (dyeing, metalworking and glassmaking).
While artisans labored in workshops with tools and ingredients specific to their
craft, alchemists seemed to have made use of a more complex set of materials,
instruments and techniques belonging to various crafts. However, Martelli also
shows that even the earliest alchemists developed specialized equipment. This leads
to the assumption that as early as the first century AD, alchemists in Hellenistic
Egypt began to differentiate themselves from artisans. However, there was no
workplace specifically designed for alchemists to engage in their activities. It is
likely they accessed the material equipment in artisanal workshops.
By the early modern period, the alchemist had acquired a specific place of work.
According to Pamela Smith, by the mid-sixteenth century, these laboratories were
referred to formally as laboratorium and officina.6 The ubiquity of furnaces and the
use of fire demanded a specific workplace, whereas experimental philosophy still
lacked specific places of experimentation in the seventeenth century. Laboratories
were associated with secretive practices. When in the early seventeenth century
Andreas Libavius described the ideal workplace of the chemist, he emphasized how
it differed from the dark, smelly, secretive laboratory that was noticeably lacking in
decorum:
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the term laboratorium uniquely referred to work-
places in which “chemical” operations were performed: smelting, combustion,
distillation, dissolution, and precipitation. Matteo Martelli has convincingly
shown that no such term was available in Antiquity.5 The Papyri, containing recipes
for the production of a range of luxury goods, and the earliest texts on alchemy,
used the terminology of specific crafts (dyeing, metalworking and glassmaking).
While artisans labored in workshops with tools and ingredients specific to their
craft, alchemists seemed to have made use of a more complex set of materials,
instruments and techniques belonging to various crafts. However, Martelli also
shows that even the earliest alchemists developed specialized equipment. This leads
to the assumption that as early as the first century AD, alchemists in Hellenistic
Egypt began to differentiate themselves from artisans. However, there was no
workplace specifically designed for alchemists to engage in their activities. It is
likely they accessed the material equipment in artisanal workshops.
By the early modern period, the alchemist had acquired a specific place of work.
According to Pamela Smith, by the mid-sixteenth century, these laboratories were
referred to formally as laboratorium and officina.6 The ubiquity of furnaces and the
use of fire demanded a specific workplace, whereas experimental philosophy still
lacked specific places of experimentation in the seventeenth century. Laboratories
were associated with secretive practices. When in the early seventeenth century
Andreas Libavius described the ideal workplace of the chemist, he emphasized how
it differed from the dark, smelly, secretive laboratory that was noticeably lacking in
decorum:
We do not want the chemist to neglect the exercises of piety or exempt himself from other
duties of an upright life, simply pining away amidst his dark furnaces [. . .]. Thus we are not
going to devise from him just a chymeion or laboratory to use as a private study and
hideaway in order that his practice will be more distinguished than anyone else’s; but
rather, what we shall provide for him is a dwelling suitable for decorous participation in
society and living the life of a free man [. . .].7
5Martelli, “Greek Alchemists at Work.”
6 Smith, “Laboratories,” 299.
7 Libavius, “Commentariorum alchymiae.” Quoted and translated in Hannaway, “Laboratory
Design,” 599. However, for corrections of Hannaway’s view, see Shackelford, “Tycho Brahe,
Laboratory Design,” and Newman, “Chemical House of Libavius.”
Introduction ix
While much has been made of this association with secrecy to dissociate experi-
mental philosophy from the alchemist’s laboratory, Ursula Klein has revealed a
continuing laboratory tradition reaching into the eighteenth century.8 According to
Klein, in contrast to experimental philosophy, work in the laboratory was charac-
terized by continuous experimentation with material substances. The material
culture supporting this laboratory work remained largely unchanged. The exception
is the material equipment for transmutational alchemy and the making of the
Philosophers’ Stone, which generally disappeared from laboratories together with
transmutational alchemy itself in the eighteenth century. Laboratories were places
in which the study of nature and technical innovation went hand in hand.
As already mentioned, the term “laboratory” was not only used to refer to the
workplace of the alchemist. All workplaces in which “chemical” operations were
Florence. Two essays in this volume deal with these Florentine workplaces: Fanny
Kieffer discusses the Uffizi, and Marco Beretta the Casino di San Marco. Founded
in 1586 by Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–1587), and developed by his successor,
Ferdinando I (1549–1609), the Uffizi housed the fonderia, a workspace for the arts
of fire. Here medicines were prepared and metals fused. The fonderia was simul-
taneously a pharmacy, an alchemical laboratory, a smithy, a goldsmith’s workshop,
and a confectionary. The activities performed in theUffizi included everything from
preparing jams and sugar sculptures to the production of glass and fireworks (and
less peaceful applications of saltpeter). Francesco I also established the Casino di
San Marco. It included an alchemical laboratory, a furnace for producing porcelain,
and a glass workshop in which, under the direction of Niccolo Sisti, cristallo
(so named because it was as clear as rock crystal) was made, as well as all sorts
of colored glass in imitation of precious stones. Other important activities in the
Casino were the fusion of rock crystal, the counterfeiting of precious stones, the
production of fireworks, and the preparation of pharmaceutical remedies. Similar
activities were developed in the Uffizi and the Casino, and recipes and personnel
travelled between the two places. The only exception was Medici porcelain, which
was exclusively produced in the workshops of the Casino.
In sum, Renaissance courts established spaces where artisanal workshops and
laboratories were brought together facilitating the circulation of materials, people
and knowledge between the worlds of craft (today’s decorative arts) and alchemy.
Art Technologies and Knowledge of Material Transformation
Laboratories were not only the workplaces of transmutational alchemists. TheUffizi
and the Casino had little in common with the workplaces of alleged goldmakers
destined to fail and bring their families to financial ruin, as famously depicted by
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c.1525–1569) (Fig. 2). Just as the spaces known as
laboratories encompassed the workplaces of artisans laboring at furnaces and
Introduction xi
using materials and chemical procedures to make both everyday items and objects
of the visual and decorative arts, the activity known as alchemy encompassed more
than attempts to make gold.14 Transmutational alchemy was about the trans-
mutation of all base metals into more noble ones, but chrysopoeia was only one
aspect of alchemy. Alchemy also touched on medicine and chemical manufacture.
It was about the chemical production of things—medicines, porcelain, dyes, and
other products as well as the precious metals—and about the knowledge of how to
produce them. In this sense, “art technologies”—materials and techniques to make
art and knowledge of these materials and techniques—overlapped with alchemy.
Alchemy has deep roots in writings on material transformation from Antiquity.
The productive knowledge associated with material transformation was written
down in recipe books. The Leiden and Stockholm Papyri date to the third century
AD. They contain recipes for the making of gold and silver, for the imitation of
precious stones, and for textile dyes. Whether a recipe is about coloring silver to
make it look like gold or the making of an imitation ruby or another artificial
precious stone, all of the recipes in the Papyri are, indeed, about material trans-
formation and color change as related to the manufacture of luxury goods. As
about 40 manuscripts produced in Northern Europe between the fourteenth and the
sixteenth centuries, this paper investigates the context behind these writings, and the
various ways alchemical and artisanal recipes were embedded within recipe books.
It also proposes some clues to assist in locating, identifying and demarcating
alchemical writings within the literature of recipes.
In the Middle Ages and premodern period, alchemical knowledge and practice was
frequently transmitted via collections of recipes grouped concomitantly with artistic
instructions. Presented in the form of a succession of more or less short notes, these
S. Neven (*)
FRS-F.N.R.S, University of Liège (ULg), ‘Transitions’ Liège, Belgium
e-mail: Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
S. Dupré (ed.), Laboratories of Art, Archimedes 37,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05065-2_2, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
23
mailto:Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
writings describe processes for the manufacture, preparation and application of
various types of materials and substances. The majority are anonymous compi-
lations of texts, which may originate from older or undetermined authorities.
Hundreds of such collections of recipes dealing both with alchemical and
art-technological procedures were produced and disseminated in Northern Europe
from the fourteenth century on, especially in German-speaking countries.
Drawing on a delimited corpus of about 40 representative German manuscripts
dated from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, this paper investigates the
connections and similarities between these two fields and examines the various
ways alchemical and artistic instructions were embedded within recipe books.1 It
argues that textual form and lexical proximities within recipes from these different
disciplines may lead to association, contamination and confusion within this textual
genre. It finally suggests some clues to help locate, distinguish and demarcate
alchemical content within the literature of recipes.
Art and Alchemy Within Recipe Books
At first sight, any overlap between alchemy and art-technology within recipe books
can be broadly explained by the mutual use of various materials and substances
such as “common stones, gems, and types of marble, gold and other metals, sulfurs,
salts, and inks, azures, minium, and other colors, oils and burning pitches, and
countless other things.”2 More precisely, the field of art-technology encompasses a
large range of craft practices involved in the production of pieces of art (including
those which incorporate such substances). This ‘hand’ knowledge, is related to the
mechanical arts and is divorced from the philosophical or speculative dimension.
Yet, alchemy could be described as the practical, philosophical and medical search
for the perfecting of base material substances and also for the extending of life.3
The theoretical and practical aspects of alchemy involve both the study of all
inanimate or animate things made from the elements and the observation and
imitation of natural processes within the laboratory.4 In this context, alchemy
could be seen as a mechanical art, in the sense that it works on matter but is also
a liberal art, as it attempts to explain matter in its composition and its transforma-
tion.5 In the practical sense, one of the main goals of alchemy is the transmutation
1 The main data and characteristics of these manuscripts are given in Appendix.
2 Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon, 39–40.
3 Perception and definition of alchemy is not chronologically constant and has been the subject of
of Alchemy.”
4Halleux, “Alchimie,” 336–7; Newman, “Technology and Alchemical Debate,” 432–3; Pereira,
“Use of Vernacular Languages,” 336; and Kahn, Alchimie et paracelsisme, 7–8.
5 Halleux, Savoir de la main, 134.
24 S. Neven
of base or impure matter (often metal or stone) into a noble or perfect one.6 To do
so, alchemists used to perform chemical processes and manipulations which resem-
bled those practiced by contemporary artists and artisans.
Thus, in both fields particular importance is placed on craft practices. Both
alchemical and artistic recipe books describe various processes for purifying and
transforming materials, either for improving their properties or in order to use them
for specific purposes. In this context, from a technological point of view, the term
‘transmutation’ could refer to the colouring of glass, the melting and tinting of
metals, the dyeing of stones or gems, or the manufacture of synthetic pigments. A
huge number of recipes are dedicated to procedures for obtaining gold or silver or
gold-silver like substances from base metals (copper, tin, lead, iron, mercury).
The tradition of recipe books has roots deep in Antiquity. Treatises dealing both
with art-technological and alchemical procedures notably survived in the Alexan-
drian Greek papyri preserved in Leyden and Stockholm.7 These date from the third
century but were probably based on previous texts.8 These papyri contain informa-
tion on the imitation of precious materials such as gold, gems and Tyrian purple.
They also have recipes dedicated to the art of dyeing, to chrysography, and to the
making of artificial precious stones.
An echo of these recipes can be found in the Codex Lucensis 490 (Lucca,
Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniàna), also known as the Compositiones ad tingenda
musiva or Compositiones variae. This manuscript, dated from the end of the eighth
or the very beginning of the ninth century, is based on previous Greek sources
compiled around the beginning of the seventh century.9 This recipe book deals with
various artistic techniques, notably the dyeing of skins, the manufacture of pig-
ments, colorants, varnishes and glues, chrysography and the gilding of metals.
The Lucca Manuscript shares content with the Mappae clavicula, compiled
around 800. Parts of this text have far earlier origins and present parallels not
only with the Leyden and Stockholm papyri but also with Syriac translation of
Zosimus and with ps.–Democritus’s writings.10 The nucleus of this text was
probably a Greek alchemical treatise written and translated between the fourth
and the fifth centuries, with additions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.11 The
two main manuscripts are the Corning, Corning Glass Museum, Ms. 5 and Sélestat,
Bibliothèque Humaniste, Ms. 17, but this tradition was also (partly) disseminated
through dozens of manuscripts. The Mappae clavicula contains about 300 recipes
performed were known as laboratories, and as such, artisanal workshops with
furnaces and fire in which “chemical” operations were performed were also
known as laboratories. For example, the places in which sixteenth-century pro-
ducers of fireworks developed their materials were called laboratories.9 In terms of
material culture the laboratorium, for example, one designed and equipped by
Count Wolfgang II von Hohenlohe-Weidersheim (1546–1610) in the early seven-
teenth century, was remarkably similar to the workplaces of apothecaries, metal-
workers and glassmakers.10
Before the emergence of mercantilist states, Renaissance courts were the most
important agents in establishing laboratories. The laboratories of Rudolf II (1552–
1612) in Prague and Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel (1572–1632) were
thought to bring material and intellectual rewards.11 Moritz even founded a chair
of chymiatria at the University of Marburg in 1609.12 The teaching of Johannes
Hartmann (1561–1631), who was appointed to the chair, included work in the
laboratory, likewise established at the university. Courts also developed workplaces
in which the work of artisans could be tested. Most famously, in the 1670s, Johann
Joachim Becher (1635–1682) proposed the establishment of a Kunst- und
Werckhaus at the court in Vienna.13 It would have included several different sorts
of manufactures: porcelain making, silk and wool weaving, the production of
medicines and glassmaking. Chemical laboratories were to form the core of the
8Klein, “Laboratory Challenge,” and “Apothecary Shops.” For the dissociation of experimental
philosophy from the alchemical laboratory, see Shapin, “House of Experiment.”
9Werrett, Fireworks, 29–30.
10Weyer, Graf Wolfgang II. von Hohenlohe. For material culture of laboratories, see also Osten,
Alchemistenlaboratorium Oberstockstall; Soukup &Mayer, Alchemistisches Gold, and the shorter
report, Soukop, Osten & Mayer, “Alembics, Cucurbits, Phials,” 25; Howard, La Bibliothèque et le
laboratoire; Pereira, “Utili segreti”; Rouaze, “Atelier de distillation”; and Joly, “Laboratoire
alchimique.”
11 Among the numerous publications on court alchemy, see two foundational studies: Moran,
The Alchemical World; and Evans, Rudolf II.
12 Ganzenmüller, “Das chemische Laboratorium.”
13 Smith, Business of Alchemy, 190–8.
x Introduction
house. These laboratories were intended to specialize in salts and acids used in the
production of mineral dyes. Becher envisioned that the manufacture and export of
these dyes would finance the other operations of the Kunst- und Werckhaus. He also
envisaged the house attracting artisans from various crafts and that it would
function as a deposit of recipes and descriptions of techniques. Trained artisans
would then be sent out to distribute new processes, new manufactures and inven-
tions. Becher used alchemy to intrigue his patron, who was always interested in the
wealth promised by metallic transmutation, and to link the worlds of the court and
commerce.
Such court projects often took inspiration from the two earliest examples of
spaces bringing together alchemy and the decorative arts at the Medici court in
Graeco-Arabica 4: 21–24.
Westerink, Leendert G. 1948. Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina. Nijmegen: Centrale
Drukkerij N.V.
22 M. Martelli
Transmission of Alchemical and Artistic
Knowledge in German Mediaeval
and Premodern Recipe Books
Sylvie Neven
Abstract In the Middle Ages and premodern period, artisanal knowledge was
transmitted via collections of recipes often grouped concomitantly with alchemical
texts and instructions. Except for some very well-known artistic treatises, e.g. works
by Eraclius or the Schedula diversarum artium, attributed to Theophilus, detection
and delimitation of alchemical content within recipe books has been rare and
fraught with difficulty. Alchemy can be defined as the ‘art of transmutation’,
referring to the perfection of base or impure matter (often metal or stone) into
perfect substances. Alchemical procedures thus rely on artisanal/craft practices.
Any overlap between alchemy and art-technological procedures can be explained
by the use of identical materials and substances. Both are concerned with the
description of colours—especially in processes of change, the making of pigments,
the production of artificial gemstones, the imitation of gold and silver and the
transmutation of materials. Both require procedures involving precise and specifi-
cally defined actions, prescriptions and ingredients. So both ultimately use identical
rhetorical formulations that reflect a ‘step by step’ procedure. Assuming that
alchemical and artistic texts have the same textual format, raises the question: did
they also have the same types of production and dissemination? Using a corpus of
about 40 manuscripts produced in Northern Europe between the fourteenth and the
sixteenth centuries, this paper investigates the context behind these writings, and the
various ways alchemical and artisanal recipes were embedded within recipe books.
It also proposes some clues to assist in locating, identifying and demarcating
alchemical writings within the literature of recipes.
In the Middle Ages and premodern period, alchemical knowledge and practice was
frequently transmitted via collections of recipes grouped concomitantly with artistic
instructions. Presented in the form of a succession of more or less short notes, these
S. Neven (*)
FRS-F.N.R.S, University of Liège (ULg), ‘Transitions’ Liège, Belgium
e-mail: Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
S. Dupré (ed.), Laboratories of Art, Archimedes 37,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05065-2_2, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
23
mailto:Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
writings describe processes for the manufacture, preparation and application of
various types of materials and substances. The majority are anonymous compi-
lations of texts, which may originate from older or undetermined authorities.
Hundreds of such collections of recipes dealing both with alchemical and
art-technological procedures were produced and disseminated in Northern Europe
from the fourteenth century on, especially in German-speaking countries.
Drawing on a delimited corpus of about 40 representative German manuscripts
dated from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, this paper investigates the
connections and similarities between these two fields and examines the various
ways alchemical and artistic instructions were embedded within recipe books.1 It
Introduction xiii
It is in this context of alchemical expertise that we should consider the artisans
who adopted the language of alchemy in the early modern period to attract the
attention of patrons. One example can be seen in the description of Black Berthold,
the legendary discoverer of gunpowder in Europe, in the late fifteenth-century
manuscript Feuerwerckbuch. Depicted in the company of a furnace and alembics,
Berthold’s creation of ordnance is identified with alchemy. Black Berthold, the
Feuerwerckbuch reads,
worked with the great alchemy like those masters who are engaged with precious and
valuable things, with silver and gold, and with similar metals. These masters can separate
silver and gold from other precious jewelry, and from other valuable colors which they can
produce. Now this master Berthold wanted to induce a golden coloration. For this he used
salpetre, sulphur, lead and oil. Then he put these ingredients in a container made of copper,
which he sealed completely, exactly as it should be done, but when he put it on fire and the
container became hot, it burst into many pieces.19
The Feuerwerckbuch witnesses material production based on practical chemistry in
terms borrowed from alchemical transmutation, or more precisely, the making of
gold. The analogy was not always with chrysopoeia as such. Vasari’s already
mentioned fashioning of Van Eyck as an alchemist shows that the image of alchemy
as a field of expert inquiry on materials and material transformation was considered
sufficiently positive to identify with. However, we should not forget that Vasari’s
identification of Van Eyck as an alchemist served the purpose of downplaying
Netherlandish art as techne, only a first step in a narrative of art historical progress
culminating in Vasari’s beloved Florentine art.
The epistemic value of techne was shifting at the time of Vasari. Artisans came
to be considered experts of nature likening the artisanal processes of material
transformation undertaken in their workshops to those of nature.20 As Andrea
Bernardoni shows in this volume, Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia is part of this larger
process of shifting epistemic value of artisanal processes. Rejecting transmutational
alchemy as “false” and the alchemists who practiced it as fraudulent, Biringuccio
carved out space for true alchemy as one of the arts of fire. Artisanal workshops,
such as Andrea Verrocchio’s (c.1435–1488) in which Leonardo da Vinci (1452–
1519) apprenticed or Leonardo’s own workplace, shared a material culture with
alchemical laboratories. As we have already pointed out, artisans used similar
equipment and performed “chemical” operations. However, Bernardoni argues,
Biringuccio made the claim that these artisans were the true experts on matter,
materials and material transformation and that artisanal “chemical” operations were
the key to natural knowledge.
One of the readers of Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia was Johannes Mathesius (1504–
1565), a Lutheran preacher in St. Joachimsthal, the center of an important mining
district. In her contribution to this volume, Henrike Haug analyzes Mathesius’s
Rampling, Marlise Rijks, Maurice Yves-Christian Sass, Lorenz Seelig, Pamela
Smith, Anke Timmermann, Barbara Tramelli, Berit Wagner, Arie Wallert, Ittai
Weinryb, Steve Wharton, and Alan Williams.
This book would not have been possible – and even less possible in such a short
time – without the efficient and magnificent editorial assistance of Gina Partridge
Grzimek, Lea Poeschl and Celine Camps. My final thanks go to Jed Buchwald for
his trust in the project and for considering the book for his series Archimedes, and to
Lucy Fleet for her assistance, advice and patience throughout the several stages of
this edited book project.
Berlin, Germany Sven Dupré
Introduction xvii
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Dialog. Festschrift f€ur Gerhard Wolf, eds. Manuela De Giorgi, Annette Hoffmann, and
Nicola Suthor, 499–512. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.
Hannaway, Owen. 1986. Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus
Tycho Brahe. Isis 77: 585–610.
Hassenstein, Wilhelm. 1943. Das Feuerwerckbuch von 1420: 600 Jahre deutsche Pulverwaffen
und Buchsenmeister. Munich: Deutschen Technik.
Howard, Rio. 1983. La Bibliothèque et le laboratoire de Guy de La Brosse au Jardin des Plantes à
Paris. Genève: Droz.
Joly, Bernard. 1992. Qu’est-ce qu’un laboratoire alchimique?. Cahiers d’histoire et de philosophie
des sciences 40: 86–102.
Fireworks, 28.
20 Smith, Body of the Artisan. esp. 95–127.
xiv Introduction
sermons to reveal conceptions of the origin and formation of ores for which
Mathesius drew equally on natural philosophy and alchemy and on the artisanal
knowledge of the local miners and goldsmiths. Following one of the goldsmiths’
most prized objects, a so-called Handstein, into the Kunstkammer, Haug shows that
this knowledge also reached elite collectors. They valued Handsteine for the
metallogenetic knowledge they embodied, thereby endorsing the shifting epistemic
status of the arts.
Epistemic Changes Between Artisans and Alchemists
Biringuccio and Mathesius’s St. Joachimsthal are examples of persons and places
of exchange between scholarly cultures (in which learning is based on reading and
writing) and artisanal cultures (in which learning is based on doing).21 The labo-
ratories created in Medici Florence, discussed in the chapters by Kieffer and
Beretta, were also early examples of such places of exchange, followed by many
other European courts. These workplaces facilitated the exchange of materials
between alchemy and the arts, and the attraction of the courts also made artisans
adopt alchemical language to elevate the status of their craft. However, above all,
these court laboratories made possible, well beyond a shared material culture, the
exchange of people and knowledge between the arts and alchemy. Although there is
a long tradition of experimentation in alchemy and the boundaries between alchemy
and art technologies were fluid from the very beginnings of alchemy in Antiquity, in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries artisans became more deeply involved in
alchemical pursuits, and some crafts relied on chemical expertise offered by
scholars trained as alchemists.22 Above all, texts and books, products and symbols
of scholarly culture, played an increasingly important role in laboratories and
workshops. In these workplaces, a sort of hybrid figure was at work, with one
foot in artisanal culture and another in scholarly culture and impossible to catego-
rize in mutually exclusive categories of the scholar and the craftsman.23 Certain
types of crafts—glassmaking, gold- and silversmithing, and porcelain production—
seem to have been particularly prone to exchanges between artisanal and scholarly
alchemical cultures. By the seventeenth century, the expertise of some glassmakers,
silver- and goldsmiths and producers of porcelain was just as based in the worlds of
alchemical and bookish learning as it was grounded in hands-on work in the
laboratory.24 Lawrence Principe and Morgan Wesley discuss two examples of
such arts: silversmithing and porcelain production, respectively.
21 For ‘trading zones’ between artisanal and scholarly cultures, see Long, Artisan/Practitioners.
22 Klein, “Chemical Experts.”
23 On hybrid experts, see Klein, “Artisanal-Scientific Experts,” and “Depersonalizing the Arcanum.”
24 For glassmaking (not discussed here), see Beretta, Alchemy of Glass; and Dupré, “Value of
Glass.”
Introduction xv
Silver- and goldsmiths seem obvious candidates when we think of careers that
cross artisan and alchemist. Silversmiths, goldsmiths and alchemists worked on the
same materials (silver and gold), and silver- and goldsmiths’ expertise was called
for to assay the purported gold and silver transmuted by alchemists. Silver- and
disciplines may lead to association, contamination and confusion within this textual
genre. It finally suggests some clues to help locate, distinguish and demarcate
alchemical content within the literature of recipes.
Art and Alchemy Within Recipe Books
At first sight, any overlap between alchemy and art-technology within recipe books
can be broadly explained by the mutual use of various materials and substances
such as “common stones, gems, and types of marble, gold and other metals, sulfurs,
salts, and inks, azures, minium, and other colors, oils and burning pitches, and
countless other things.”2 More precisely, the field of art-technology encompasses a
large range of craft practices involved in the production of pieces of art (including
those which incorporate such substances). This ‘hand’ knowledge, is related to the
mechanical arts and is divorced from the philosophical or speculative dimension.
Yet, alchemy could be described as the practical, philosophical and medical search
for the perfecting of base material substances and also for the extending of life.3
The theoretical and practical aspects of alchemy involve both the study of all
inanimate or animate things made from the elements and the observation and
imitation of natural processes within the laboratory.4 In this context, alchemy
could be seen as a mechanical art, in the sense that it works on matter but is also
a liberal art, as it attempts to explain matter in its composition and its transforma-
tion.5 In the practical sense, one of the main goals of alchemy is the transmutation
1 The main data and characteristics of these manuscripts are given in Appendix.
2 Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon, 39–40.
3 Perception and definition of alchemy is not chronologically constant and has been the subject of
several (re)interpretations since the eighteenth century, see Principe & Newman, “Historiography
of Alchemy.”
4Halleux, “Alchimie,” 336–7; Newman, “Technology and Alchemical Debate,” 432–3; Pereira,
“Use of Vernacular Languages,” 336; and Kahn, Alchimie et paracelsisme, 7–8.
5 Halleux, Savoir de la main, 134.
24 S. Neven
of base or impure matter (often metal or stone) into a noble or perfect one.6 To do
so, alchemists used to perform chemical processes and manipulations which resem-
bled those practiced by contemporary artists and artisans.
Thus, in both fields particular importance is placed on craft practices. Both
alchemical and artistic recipe books describe various processes for purifying and
transforming materials, either for improving their properties or in order to use them
for specific purposes. In this context, from a technological point of view, the term
‘transmutation’ could refer to the colouring of glass, the melting and tinting of
metals, the dyeing of stones or gems, or the manufacture of synthetic pigments. A
huge number of recipes are dedicated to procedures for obtaining gold or silver or
gold-silver like substances from base metals (copper, tin, lead, iron, mercury).
The tradition of recipe books has roots deep in Antiquity. Treatises dealing both
with art-technological and alchemical procedures notably survived in the Alexan-
drian Greek papyri preserved in Leyden and Stockholm.7 These date from the third
century but were probably based on previous texts.8 These papyri contain informa-
tion on the imitation of precious materials such as gold, gems and Tyrian purple.
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco
(1574–1621) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Marco Beretta
Goldsmiths and Chymists: The Activity of Artisans Within
Alchemical Circles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Lawrence M. Principe
Igne refutata: Thermal Analysis in the Laboratory Practices
of John Dwight and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Morgan Wesley
v
ThiS is a FM Blank Page
Introduction
The Antwerp painter Adriaen van Utrecht (1599–1652) arranged Chinese porce-
lain, a goblet made of rock crystal and cristallo glasses à la façon de Venise, next to
a magnificent display of gold- and silversmiths’ works on a table in the foreground
of his 1636 “Allegory of Fire” (Fig. 1).1 Many of these objects have been identified
as originating in Antwerp, and it is likely that Van Utrecht’s painting celebrates
the manufacture and trade of luxury goods for which Antwerp gained fame in the
early seventeenth century. Van Utrecht’s objects have another point in common:
one way or the other they are produced through the agency of fire. Van Utrecht’s
painting celebrates Antwerp’s economic power and the productive ingenuity of its
craftsmen and artists as much as it praises the transformative force of fire turning
relatively cheap and humble materials into highly valued objects of art. These
objects were all products of the arts of fire, which according to Vannoccio
Biringuccio (1480–c.1539) included alchemy, and excluded “false alchemy”
concerned with pretentious transmutation.2
In the background of Van Utrecht’s painting, a window opens on to a space in
which a man stands working at a stove with an open fire. Stirring a cauldron, the
man is shown in the material company of bellows, an anvil, a melting and a
distilling furnace, and other equipment related to the worlds of assaying and
metallurgy. Van Utrecht’s background refers to the spaces in which the objects in
the foreground were produced. Were these spaces laboratories or artisanal work-
shops? Were they home to gold- and silversmiths, glassmakers or producers of
porcelain? The difference between workshops and laboratories during this period is
ambiguous, not only in Van Utrecht’s depiction, and the line between the two
spaces is as difficult to draw as that between the arts of fire and alchemy. This book
is concerned with the interconnections and differentiations between foreground and
1My discussion of Van Utrecht’s painting in this and the next paragraph is based on Göttler,
“The Alchemist, the Painter.”
2 For Biringuccio’s attitude towards alchemy, see Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 128–32.
vii
background in Van Utrecht’s painting, between artisanal workshops and alchemical
laboratories, between the material arts and alchemy.
Van Utrecht is one of the heirs of Van Eyck (c.1390–1441). Following Giorgio
his investigation of the physical world, see Katsiampoura, “Transmutation of Matter,” 665–7.
4 “τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ πηγνύμενον λιθοῦται ει$ ς κρύσταλλον [and] τοῦτο ει$ ς ἀτμίδα λυóμενον ἀὴρ
καθίσταται.”
5 In § 4 Psellos explains the petrifaction of an oak struck by a lightning strike: a quick and sharp
lightning does not only make the oak black, but consumes all its humidity and transforms the wood
into stone.
6 See infra, § 3.
7 The entry continues by telling how the emperor Diocletian (284–305) made to burn all the
Egyptian books on alchemy (in the Greek text: “περὶ χημείας χρυσοῦ και ἀργύρου”); this
information probably depends on the Chronicle (Ἰστορία χρονική) of John of Antioch (active
under Heraclius’s reign, 610–641): see fragment 280 in Roberto, Ioannis Antiocheni Fragmenta.
The Alchemical Art of Dyeing: The Fourfold Division of Alchemy. . . 3
Empire, the same definition had been already given by the Persian scholar al-Nadı̄m
(ninth century AD), who devoted the tenth chapter of his Kitāb al-Fihrist (Book of
Catalogue) to the s
˙
inā‘at al-kı̄mı̄yā’ (art of alchemy): at the very beginning of the
chapter this art is defined again as “the making of gold and silver from other
metals.”8 More than one century later, the Syriac scholar Bar Bahlul (eleventh
century AD) dealt with the same subject in two entries of his lexicon:
1. Duval, Lexicon Syriacum, vol. I, 901:
Kimiya, the dark stone. It is the work of the art of gold and silver. And there is
someone who explains this word from the name kima (the constellation of the
Pleiades), that is the height stars, because (this art) is accomplished by means of
the height mixtures.9
2. Duval, Lexicon Syriacum, vol. I, 904:
Kemela’a, that is the alchemy (kimiya’a) of the seven bodies and of the
various natures; [it includes] arts such as goldsmith’s art and copper, iron, and
glass working.10
Only the last definition includes a wide set of techniques applied to different
substances (among which glass is mentioned), while most of the above-quoted
texts identifies alchemy with the making of gold and silver. The two precious metals
were probably the most attractive outcomes that anyone engaged in alchemical
selection, appropriation and differentiation resulted in a more limited definition of
Fig. 2 Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Alchemist’s Family: Al-gemist, 1558 (Courtesy of the
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
14 For the scope of early modern alchemy and the notion of ‘chymistry’, see Principe, Secrets of
Alchemy; and Newman & Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry.”
xii Introduction
alchemy primarily focused on the making of gold and silver. Already around
300 AD, a distinction was introduced between a limited definition of alchemy as
metallic transmutation and a more encompassing definition including productive
knowledge and various artisanal technologies.
Transmitted to Europe, and translated into Latin and the vernaculars, several of
the recipes in the Papyri are still found in collections of recipes in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. More importantly, as Martelli remarks in his essay, the scope of
a recipe collection such as the Mappae clavicula, compiled between the ninth and
the twelfth centuries, is as encompassing as that of the Papyri despite the earlier
attempts to limit alchemy to metallic transmutation only. It should not come as a
surprise then that Sylvie Neven finds it difficult to demarcate between alchemical
and art technological recipes in late medieval collections of recipes. Her contri-
bution to this volume shows that alchemical and art technological recipes shared a
concern with the same materials and artisanal processes. The focus on chromatic
transformation already found in the Papyri continues in fifteenth-century recipes.
Although related to laboratory practices, Neven emphasizes that these recipe
collections are the products of scribal compilation and copying processes. Words
and works are equally important elements of alchemical practices.15 Next to
laboratories, medieval religious institutions were also important sites of alchemical
and art technological practice. However, as Neven points out, this does not exclude
that some scribes, such as the Benedictine monk Wolfgang Seidel (1491–1562),
tried out recipes.
The scope of alchemy was from its very beginnings contested, and remained so
throughout its long history. Especially its boundaries with art technology were fluid.
Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the distinction between alchemy
as strictly goldmaking and a more encompassing definition overlapping with art
technology was crucial to the polemics of artists and alchemists and the rivalry
between alchemy and the arts.16 Given the contested nature of the field of inquiry,
it follows that the identity of the alchemist was equally contested and complex. In
the early modern period the alchemist was often portrayed as a fraud. The portrayals
of laboratory scenes building on Brueghel became a genre of its own in the
Netherlands.17 In these scenes, the alchemist is a goldmaker searching in vain for
the Philosophers’ Stone and riches. As Tara Nummedal has convincingly shown,
the portrayal of the alchemist as a fraud also created the opportunity for other
alchemists to fashion themselves in the role of experts, offering their services to
courts and other patrons to help them unmask fraudulent alchemists.18 Alchemical
expertise was based on a broader knowledge of matter and materials.
15 For reading and writing as alchemical practices, see Nummedal, “Words and Works,” and the
Laboratories were not only the workplaces of transmutational alchemists. TheUffizi
and the Casino had little in common with the workplaces of alleged goldmakers
destined to fail and bring their families to financial ruin, as famously depicted by
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c.1525–1569) (Fig. 2). Just as the spaces known as
laboratories encompassed the workplaces of artisans laboring at furnaces and
Introduction xi
using materials and chemical procedures to make both everyday items and objects
of the visual and decorative arts, the activity known as alchemy encompassed more
than attempts to make gold.14 Transmutational alchemy was about the trans-
mutation of all base metals into more noble ones, but chrysopoeia was only one
aspect of alchemy. Alchemy also touched on medicine and chemical manufacture.
It was about the chemical production of things—medicines, porcelain, dyes, and
other products as well as the precious metals—and about the knowledge of how to
produce them. In this sense, “art technologies”—materials and techniques to make
art and knowledge of these materials and techniques—overlapped with alchemy.
Alchemy has deep roots in writings on material transformation from Antiquity.
The productive knowledge associated with material transformation was written
down in recipe books. The Leiden and Stockholm Papyri date to the third century
AD. They contain recipes for the making of gold and silver, for the imitation of
precious stones, and for textile dyes. Whether a recipe is about coloring silver to
make it look like gold or the making of an imitation ruby or another artificial
precious stone, all of the recipes in the Papyri are, indeed, about material trans-
formation and color change as related to the manufacture of luxury goods. As
Matteo Martelli shows in this volume, relatively early on a historical process of
selection, appropriation and differentiation resulted in a more limited definition of
Fig. 2 Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Alchemist’s Family: Al-gemist, 1558 (Courtesy of the
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
14 For the scope of early modern alchemy and the notion of ‘chymistry’, see Principe, Secrets of
Alchemy; and Newman & Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry.”
xii Introduction
alchemy primarily focused on the making of gold and silver. Already around
300 AD, a distinction was introduced between a limited definition of alchemy as
metallic transmutation and a more encompassing definition including productive
knowledge and various artisanal technologies.
Transmitted to Europe, and translated into Latin and the vernaculars, several of
the recipes in the Papyri are still found in collections of recipes in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. More importantly, as Martelli remarks in his essay, the scope of
a recipe collection such as the Mappae clavicula, compiled between the ninth and
the twelfth centuries, is as encompassing as that of the Papyri despite the earlier
attempts to limit alchemy to metallic transmutation only. It should not come as a
surprise then that Sylvie Neven finds it difficult to demarcate between alchemical
and art technological recipes in late medieval collections of recipes. Her contri-
bution to this volume shows that alchemical and art technological recipes shared a
concern with the same materials and artisanal processes. The focus on chromatic
transformation already found in the Papyri continues in fifteenth-century recipes.
Although related to laboratory practices, Neven emphasizes that these recipe
Empire, the same definition had been already given by the Persian scholar al-Nadı̄m
(ninth century AD), who devoted the tenth chapter of his Kitāb al-Fihrist (Book of
Catalogue) to the s
˙
inā‘at al-kı̄mı̄yā’ (art of alchemy): at the very beginning of the
chapter this art is defined again as “the making of gold and silver from other
metals.”8 More than one century later, the Syriac scholar Bar Bahlul (eleventh
century AD) dealt with the same subject in two entries of his lexicon:
1. Duval, Lexicon Syriacum, vol. I, 901:
Kimiya, the dark stone. It is the work of the art of gold and silver. And there is
someone who explains this word from the name kima (the constellation of the
Pleiades), that is the height stars, because (this art) is accomplished by means of
the height mixtures.9
2. Duval, Lexicon Syriacum, vol. I, 904:
Kemela’a, that is the alchemy (kimiya’a) of the seven bodies and of the
various natures; [it includes] arts such as goldsmith’s art and copper, iron, and
glass working.10
Only the last definition includes a wide set of techniques applied to different
substances (among which glass is mentioned), while most of the above-quoted
texts identifies alchemy with the making of gold and silver. The two precious metals
were probably the most attractive outcomes that anyone engaged in alchemical
practices tried to achieve out of this art, as is possible to infer from a few accounts
on alchemists preserved by Byzantine and Syriac chronographers. In the mid-sixth
century, for instance, John Malalas (491–578) reported the story of John Istmeos,
χειμευτὴς ὑπάρχων καὶ φοβερὸς ἐπιθε�της (alchemist and tremendous impostor),
who moved from Antioch to Constantinople, where he was condemned by the
emperor Anastasios (491–518) because of the adulterated gold objects he tried to
8 I have quoted the translation proposed by Dodge (The Fihrist, 841), who checked several
manuscripts (see pp. xxiii–xxxiv) not taken into account by Flügel, who edited the Arabic text.
In Flügel’s edition (Kitāb al-Fihrist, vol. II, 351) the passage reads:
, translated by Fück, “Arabic Literature of Alchemy,” 88, as follows:
“The adepts of the Art of Alchemy, which is the art of making gold and silver without (recourse to)
mining.”
9
The expression literally
means ‘stone of sadness.’ Berthelot & Duval, Chimie, 133 translated it as ‘pierre philosophale.’
Instead of (‘sadness, grieving’), I read (‘black, dark’); on the tendency of
identifying ‘alchemy’ with the substance used for transforming vile metals into gold and silver,
see Gildemeister, “Alchymie.”
10
suggested by formulae which follow some of the recipes, such as probatum vom
Bischoff von Freising (Cgm 4117, fol. 2v). Schobinger is notably at the root of a
large compilation of alchemical texts.32 He is also renewed for having personally
known Paracelsus, who referred to Schobinger’s writings.33 The value of such an
authority may appear visually in the recipe book. In the Cgm 4117, Seidel dedicates
a whole page to recording Schobinger’s name.34 Moreover, the simple invocation
28 See, for example, Barthélemy, “Alchimie et médecine,” 110–3.
29 Paulus, “Wolfgang Seidel”; and Pöhlein, Wolfgang Seidel.
30 “So vill vom geschenckh hab ich auss der liberej des closters zw sant vlrich zw Augspurg lassen
abschreiben durch ain knaben des namen ist Walthasar Gech von Fiessen im 1550 Jahr.” (Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 4118, fol. 128r).
31 Schobinger, Schowinger von St. Gallen.
32Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 209; and Hertenstein, Joachim von Watt, 91–2.
33Meier, Paracelsus, 33–46.
34 “Von bartholome Schobinger burger zu sanndt Gallen in Schweitz. Hab ich dise nachuolgende
kunstel. etc./Empfangen den Sibenvnndzwaintzigisten tag. des Monats Februarii/Anno etc. 40.”
(Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 4117, fol. 62r).
30 S. Neven
of the name of the Bishop of Freising would have served to confirm the efficacy of
some of the technical instructions. Thus, the same way the scribes used to relate old
treatises or data with the name of previous and quoted authorities, such as (pseudo)
Albertus Magnus or Arnaldus de Villa Nova, they also mention those of their
contemporaries to lend authority to validate the practicability or the reproducibility
of the instructions they consign.35
In some cases, the information recorded in recipe books is documented as having
been provided by an artist or practitioner. Augsbourg Staats- und Stadtbibliothek 2�
Cod. 207 was produced in St. Ulrich and St. Afra’s Cloister. It contains miscella-
neous alchemical treatises and collections of recipes contributed by several scribes,
including the monk Bild Vitus (1481–1529) and Johannes Gossolt (1421–1506),
identified as vicarius augustensis.36 In this work, Gossolt combined alchemical
treatises attributed to (pseudo) Albertus Magnus with Latin and German alchemical
recipes. For the latter he sometimes specifies his local sources. For example, at folio
171v, he mentions the “Magistri Jodoci Aurifabri de Haidelberga.” Other citations
of goldsmiths’ names are found in our corpus of texts. In the St. Gallen Cod.
Vadiana 395, several alchemical instructions are associated with the name of
“Nicolaus Aurifaber.” In many respects, metalworkers seem to have shared interest
and knowledge in alchemical practices and materials.37
As stated above, whether alchemical or art-technological, the recipes contained
in these manuscripts are presented in the form of a formula which, in most cases,
enumerates the ingredients and the actions necessary to produce a particular
preparation. In addition artistic recipes sometimes indicate the recommended
geographical provenance or grade of quality of the ingredients. Suggestions for
possible substitutions might also appear. This sort of information is rare in alchem-
ical recipes.
The length of a recipe depends not only on the number of ingredients involved
but also on its complexity, the number of steps necessary to obtain the final product.
A recipe can be anything from one sentence to several pages within a manuscript.
Alternatively, a recipe may appear merely as a brief list of ingredients, without any
other additional information. In fact, two categories of recipe can be distinguished:
the Vollrezepte (detailed recipes) and the Kurzrezepte (abbreviated recipes).55 In
the first, the quantities and the various steps are indicated. In the second, only the
55Halleux, “Alchimie,” 343.
Transmission of Alchemical and Artistic Knowledge in German Mediaeval and. . . 39
ingredients are cited: the procedure is sketched out or omitted altogether and the
rest is left to the ingenuity of the user. This second category is more common in the
case of artistic recipes; a great many of the recipes dedicated to the manufacture of
ink are written in the form of a very short list of ingredients. It is less common for
the alchemical recipes to be presented this way.
The title of a recipe may also give an indication of the final product to be obtained
and, in some cases, specify the use of the product. Again, this is particularly true for
artistic instructions and is less observable for alchemical ones.
For both types of instructions (alchemical or artistic), some steps could be
omitted or were left to the interpretation of the reader. Specified quantities may
be missing in both fields. When quantities are given, artistic recipes are far more
likely to use local measurements, whereas in alchemical instructions, the quanti-
ties—if mentioned at all—are more often expressed in terms of ratio or proportions.
In some cases, these proportions are not ‘practically’ correct. A very well-known
example is the proportion of mercury and sulphur proposed by mediaeval recipes
for the production of vermilion which is invariably incorrect.56 Very rarely are the
correct chemical proportions cited.
In parallel, alchemical writings may involve the use of symbols or metaphors to
designate substances and practices. In consequence, the way an alchemical recipe
was received would depend on the degree of experience of the reader-practitioner
reading it. On the one hand, the (sometimes) metaphorical or codified language
as well as the approximations stressed the arcane nature of these recipes and
contributed to their secrecy. On the other hand, the omitted information may have
been complemented by data only known to some readers and not recorded by the
copyist who conserves only the essential part of the recipe. If so then this kind of
recipe was only meant to be accessible and useable by those practitioners who could
easily fill in the lacuna that punctuated the text of the recipe.
As previously observed, citations of authority were frequently used by the scribes
of the manuscripts. However, the tendency for an older authority to be cited in the
recipe books is particularly characteristic of the alchemical writings and less typical
of the art-technological recipes. As stated above, such citations primarily served to
legitimate the technical and chemical procedures. In addition, most alchemical
Visible: 0% - 95%
Here’s a list of 50 materials mentioned across Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the 18th Century with notes on how they relate to alchemy and artisanal culture. I’ve grouped them into categories (metals, stones, pigments, dyes, chemicals, organics) to reflect how alchemists and artisans worked with them:
📌 Pattern: The book shows how alchemy and artisanal culture overlapped in their materials. Alchemists sought transmutation and perfection, while artisans used the same substances in practical crafts—glassmaking, gilding, pigment manufacture, dyeing, porcelain, fireworks, and metallurgy. Recipe books often mixed instructions for both domains, blurring boundaries【8:4†source】【8:15†source】.
Do you want me to expand this into a table with columns for Material, Alchemy Involvement, and Artisanal Culture (like pigments → transmutation vs. painting), so you get a clear comparative view?
continue with any materials we've missed
{"queries": ["list of substances, ingredients, or materials used in alchemy or artisanal practices", "materials mentioned in dyeing, glassmaking, porcelain, or metallurgical recipes", "chemicals and substances in alchemical laboratories", "materials in the Uffizi and Casino di San Marco workshops", "ingredients for pigments, dyes, or artificial gems in alchemy"]}
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own experiments (for example smelting rock crystal).29 This laboratory was lead by
Sisti, who also lead a glassmaking laboratory in Pisa, where he often had to go. In
his early career he used the technique a lume di lucerna, but once he transfered to
the Uffizi, this activity became secondary.30
At the Uffizi, glass production may well have been located in the smithy
workshop. It was probably limited to the glass technique a lume di lucerna. The
oven glass manufacturing method came from existing production centres such as
the ones in Pratolino, or Pisa, which became the most important in Tuscany. On the
other hand, during Ferdinando I’s reign, documents already show activities by
someone called Niccolò di Vincenzo Landi di Lucca, after Sisi, the principal
glassmaker in service to the Medici’s till 1620. The sources show that Landi, a
specialist in a lume di lucerne, went on duty in the fonderia of the Uffizi in 1591,
where he made little animals for the decoration of glass manufactured in Pisa.31 In
1601, Antonio Neri also mentioned him as the leader of the new glasswork in the
Casino di San Marco.32 Later, in 1618, when Grand Duke Cosimo II (1590–1621)
set up a large workshop with many ovens in the Boboli gardens near the Pitti palace,
28 ASF, GM 403, ins. 2, fol. 120.
29 On the story of the Medicean glassmaking, see Heikamp, “Mediceische Glaskunst.”
30 The technique a lume di lucerna allows to make or decorate little objects heating locally the
glass elements thanks to a lantern flame or a candle.
31 ASF, GM 112, passim; GM 217, fol. 23; and GM 195, ins. 1, fol. 102.
32 On the priest Antonio Neri and his treatise on the art of glassmaking, see Abbri’s introduction to
Neri, L’arte vetraria (2001), 5–23.
116 F. Kieffer
he entrusted its management to him, which shows that he was certainly able to
supervise large-scale production.
The fonderia produced mainly small ornamental glass items (Fig. 7). The items
in use for distillery and for the other workshops came either from Pisa, or from the
Casino di San Marco.33 Mainly made of bronze or metal, the models of these little
items were created by the court goldsmiths or by the smelters: there were little
masks, buttons to be filled with perfumes, ornamental glasses.34 The glasses, stored
in a hall of the Galleria “la stanza dei cristalli,” were distributed according to the
grand duke’s wishes and other workshops requirements (most of them were given
as presents or used to decorate other items coming from other workshops).35 Sisti,
in charge of the fonderia, was responsible for the seamless transitions between the
different stages of the process, which was not always an easy task in the case of a
delicate material such as crystal.36
The Forge
In the Uffizi, the forge and smelting works were far less visible and have less
prestige. Only small items are worked on in the forge: little masks for the orna-
extension of the economic demand for china and the intellectual drive toward
maker’s knowledge as expressed by Bacon.
Certainly, the history of ceramics after the seventeenth century is inextricably
linked to chemistry’s success at solving increasingly sophisticated questions of
luxury pottery production. We need look no further than William Cookworthy’s
(1705–1780) patent for the manufacture of porcelain in 1768 or the thousands of
experiments conducted by Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) in the production of his
Jasperwares. Unlike the other arts of the fire; metalworking, glassmaking, and
dyeing, the late inclusion of ceramics into the hierarchy of decorative arts allows
contemporary scholars opportunities to investigate the separations between the
craft artisan and the chymist during the early modern period, of which this discus-
sion of thermal analysis is only one of many.
Table 1 A comparison of modern elemental analyses of ‘Dwight’ experimental ware, Blanc-de-
Chine, ‘Böttger’ ware, and Kangxi porcelain
Material SiO2 Al2O3 Fe2O3 CaO MgO K2O Na2O Other Total
Dwight 80.3 12.4 0.74 0.39 0.2 5.35 0.47 Trace 99.1
Blanc-de-Chine (ft46) 76.7 16.8 0.35 0.15 0.08 5.9 0.2 Trace 100
Kangxi Porcelain (ft47) seven-
teenth century
64.7 28.35 0.95 0.5 0.1 2.8 2.4 0.19 99.99
Böttger Porcelain 1708 61.0 33.0 0.00 4.8 0.00 0.1 0.2 0.9 100
Meissen Porcelain (ft48)
mid-eighteenth century
59.0 35.00 0.00 0.3 0.00 4.0 0.00 0.9 100
198 M. Wesley
Bibliography
Bacon, Francis. 1858. New Organon, trans. James Spedding et al. London: Longmans and Co.
Birch, Thomas. 1756–1757. History of the Royal Society of London. London: A. Millar.
Biringuccio, Vannoccio. [1540] 1942. The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biriniguccio: The Classic
Sixteenth-Century Treatise on Metals and Metallurgy, eds. and trans. Cyril Stanley Smith and
Marta Teach Gnudi. New York: Dover Publications.
Boardman, John. 1988. Trade in Greek Decorated Pottery. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 7: 27–
33.
Boyle, Robert. 1661. The Sceptical Chymist or Chymico-Physical Doubts and Paradoxes, Touch-
ing the Spagyrists Principles Commonly call’d Hypostatical: As They Are Wont To Be
Propos’d and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is Premis’d Part of
Another Discourse Relating To the Same Subject. London: J. Cadwell for Crooke.
Boyle, Robert. 1691. Will of the Hon. Robert Boyle, F.R.S, July 1691. The National Archives,
8On scientific illustration in late sixteenth-century Florence, see Ligozzi, I ritratti; Tongiorgi
Tomasi & Tosi, “Flora e Pomona”; Bassani Pacht et al., Marie de Médicis; and Garfagnini,
Firenze e la Toscana, vol. II. Some of those objects conceived by clock-makers and scientific
instrument builders can be seen in the exhibition catalogue: Acidini, Magnificenza alla Corte.
9 For more information on the differences and similarities between the Galleria dei lavori and the
other European court’s workshops, see Kieffer, Ferdinando I de Médicis.
10 “Che nessuno pratichi in detta Fonderia eccetto nella prima stanza dove si distribuischono li
medicamenti.” (ASF, GM 403, ins. 2, fol. 120).
11 The “terraces” mentioned in the inventory don’t exist anymore, but we can deduce from the
archival sources they were little open rooms made of wood.
The Laboratories of Art and Alchemy at the Uffizi Gallery in Renaissance. . . 111
followed by a huge distillation laboratory including an ordigno (machine) to distil
acquavite composed of 60 glass balls, a bain-marie, pallets full of glass pots of all
kind and a pierced bench to place the separatoie (separators). The following room
was full of medicine cabinets and the final room was a smithy including another
terrace, equipped with all the tools traditional to this activity (anvil, pincers,
sledgehammers etc.).
The Origins of the Fonderia: The Casino di San Marco
At the same time, another fonderia in Florence witnessed similar activities. This
was the fonderia in the Casino di San Marco, created by Francesco I long before the
one in the Uffizi. The visitors and chroniclers of the time gave famous accounts of
the experiments Francesco I lead there: for example, he found a way to melt rock
crystal and to imitate Chinese porcelain; he made false precious stones, fireworks,
and explosives. He experimented with new remedies on dying people, and he
practiced alchemy. He did not turn his back on the arts of painting, sculpture,
illumination or goldsmithing “and around those things he spends quite all the time
in a place called Casino, where he has many rooms with masters who do different
works and there he keeps his stills.”12
According to the traditional historiography, the young prince Francesco untir-
ingly frequented Cosimo I’s fonderie, set up in the Palazzo Vecchio, and so
recognised in himself the passion that was to prompt him his life long.13 In fact,
as early as 1570, he ordered the architect Bernardo Buontalenti to draw up the plans
for the Casino di San Marco: he intended to transform it into a palace worthy of a
prince and to display there his patronage in arts and sciences. In 1574, when Cosimo
I died, Francesco took possession of the Casino and of its gardens and set up the first
court workshops. Besides the artistic workshops, the palace included a fonderia
well known for its alchemical research, and its unusual layout. Indeed the suite of
adjoining rooms forms a closed circle, a labyrinth that follows a strict structural
logic and hermetic aesthetic similar to that of the Studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio.14
36 Covoni, Buontalenti ai tempi Medicei, 12.
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574–1621) 141
many times that it has progressively lost its original design. As far as I know, no
sixteenth-century drawings or engravings of the original disposition of the residen-
tial rooms and the workshops survive today. Pierfilippo Covoni found a plan of the
first floor of the building post-dating the death of Francesco’s son Don Antonio de’
Medici (1576–1621). Since we know that Don Antonio restructured the building in
1594 we should be cautious about putting too much weight on this document
(Fig. 9). At the beginning of the seventeenth century the fonderia occupied a row
of first floor rooms; in Don Antonio’s day, these were preceded by a library, to
which I will return when describing Don Antonio’s activities. We certainly know
that in Francesco’s Casino there existed a glass works, an alchemical laboratory and
a furnace for producing porcelain: painters, goldsmiths and gem carvers were also
active in the Casino but it is not clear where exactly their workshops were sited, and
Fig. 8 Detail of Buontalenti’s window of the Casino di San Marco
Fig. 9 Plan of the first floor of the Casino di San Marco published by Covoni in 1892b
142 M. Beretta
how they related one to another. On the basis of the evidence available it seems that
Buontalenti and Francesco carefully planned the disposition of the arts, putting the
chemical ones at the top of their concerns. In addition to these workshops,
Francesco displayed some of his spectacular collections of paintings, sculptures,
coins, gems, naturalia and mirabilia in several of the Casino’s rooms and the
fountain with Giambologna’s sculpture in its garden. If the arrangement of their
display is not precisely known, we have several contemporary descriptions which
help to provide us with a relatively good picture of what was going on within the
walls of the Casino. For example, we have several documents reporting on the
salaries of the artists and alchemists employed by Francesco at the Casino.37 In
addition to Buontalenti, who coordinated the activities of the various laboratories,
the salaried artisans of the Casino in 1580 included the following 18:
‘Tanai de’ Medici proveditore de’ tapezieri scudi 4 [tapestry]
Maestro Antonio portoghese tappeziere, scudi 10 [tapestry]
Ieremia Foresti fonditore, scudi 12 [metal worker]
Niccolò di mastro Sisto, scudi 5 [Medici ‘porcelain’, glass, alchemy]
Filippo della Serena mastro de vetri, scudi 12 [glass]
Giovanni Ambrogio milanese, scudi 20 [silver and rock crystal]
Stefano milanese, scudi 20 [silver and rock crystal]
Giuseppe che lavora con li duoi milanesi, scudi 6 [silver and rock crystal]
Pier Maria detto il Faenzino, scudi 10 [Medici ‘porcelain’ and majolica]
Giuseppo da Campo stovigliaio, scudi 7 [Medici ‘porcelain’ and majolica]
Giuseppe Marchesi vineziano, scudi 30 [ruby maker and carver]
Porcelain. Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 35: 24–32.
200 M. Wesley
Contents
Introduction
Laboratories and Workshops
Art Technologies and Knowledge of Material Transformation
Epistemic Changes Between Artisans and Alchemists
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
About the Authors
The Alchemical Art of Dyeing: The Fourfold Division of Alchemy and the Enochian Tradition
Alchemy and the Making of Gold: An Overview of the Byzantine Tradition
Two Early Alchemical Treatises: Ps.-Democritus and Isis
Towards a Definition of Alchemy: Zosimus and the Enochian Myth
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Transmission of Alchemical and Artistic Knowledge in German Mediaeval and Premodern Recipe Books
Art and Alchemy Within Recipe Books
Mediaeval and Premodern Recipe Books
The Sources and the Context of Production
The Modalities of Composition
The Function(s) of Recipe Books
Reliability of Recipe Books
Alchemical and Art-Technological Recipes Within a Manuscript: Location, Relationship and Distinction
Conclusion
Appendix: List of Manuscripts
Augsbourg, Staatsbibliothek
Bad Berleburg, Schlossbibliothek Sayn-Wittgenstein
Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek
Budapest, Nationalbibliothek
Erfurt, Bibliothek der Stadt
Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek
Munchen, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Nuremberg, Germanische Nationalmuseum
Prague, Narodni Knihovna
St Gallen, Kantonsbibliothek
Trier, Stadtbibliothek
Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
Winterthur, Stadtbibliothek
Wolfenbuttel, Herzog- August Bibliothek
Zürich, Stadtbibliothek
Bibliography
Artisanal Processes and Epistemological Debate in the Works of Leonardo Da Vinci and Vannoccio Biringuccio
Chemical´ Arts During the RenaissanceChemical´ Arts
Leonardo and the
Biringuccio´s Pirotechnia and the Knowledge of Nature
Bibliography
Artificial Interventions in the Natural Form of Things: Shared Metallogenetical Concepts of Goldsmiths and Alchemists
Metallogenetical Concepts
The Doppelscheuer
Conclusion
Bibliography
The Laboratories of Art and Alchemy at the Uffizi Gallery in Renaissance Florence: Some Material Aspects
The Fonderia in the Uffizi: Origins and Material Organisation
Introduction to the Fonderia
The Origins of the Fonderia: The Casino di San Marco
Similarities and Differences Between the Fonderie
The Activities in the Fonderia: Between Art and Science
Glassmaking
The Forge
The Confectionary
Alchemy
Bibliography
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574-1621)
At the Origin of a Myth
Mapping the Florentine Arts
The Casino di San Marco
Bibliography
performed were known as laboratories, and as such, artisanal workshops with
furnaces and fire in which “chemical” operations were performed were also
known as laboratories. For example, the places in which sixteenth-century pro-
ducers of fireworks developed their materials were called laboratories.9 In terms of
material culture the laboratorium, for example, one designed and equipped by
Count Wolfgang II von Hohenlohe-Weidersheim (1546–1610) in the early seven-
teenth century, was remarkably similar to the workplaces of apothecaries, metal-
workers and glassmakers.10
Before the emergence of mercantilist states, Renaissance courts were the most
important agents in establishing laboratories. The laboratories of Rudolf II (1552–
1612) in Prague and Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel (1572–1632) were
thought to bring material and intellectual rewards.11 Moritz even founded a chair
of chymiatria at the University of Marburg in 1609.12 The teaching of Johannes
Hartmann (1561–1631), who was appointed to the chair, included work in the
laboratory, likewise established at the university. Courts also developed workplaces
in which the work of artisans could be tested. Most famously, in the 1670s, Johann
Joachim Becher (1635–1682) proposed the establishment of a Kunst- und
Werckhaus at the court in Vienna.13 It would have included several different sorts
of manufactures: porcelain making, silk and wool weaving, the production of
medicines and glassmaking. Chemical laboratories were to form the core of the
8Klein, “Laboratory Challenge,” and “Apothecary Shops.” For the dissociation of experimental
philosophy from the alchemical laboratory, see Shapin, “House of Experiment.”
9Werrett, Fireworks, 29–30.
10Weyer, Graf Wolfgang II. von Hohenlohe. For material culture of laboratories, see also Osten,
Alchemistenlaboratorium Oberstockstall; Soukup &Mayer, Alchemistisches Gold, and the shorter
report, Soukop, Osten & Mayer, “Alembics, Cucurbits, Phials,” 25; Howard, La Bibliothèque et le
laboratoire; Pereira, “Utili segreti”; Rouaze, “Atelier de distillation”; and Joly, “Laboratoire
alchimique.”
11 Among the numerous publications on court alchemy, see two foundational studies: Moran,
The Alchemical World; and Evans, Rudolf II.
12 Ganzenmüller, “Das chemische Laboratorium.”
13 Smith, Business of Alchemy, 190–8.
x Introduction
house. These laboratories were intended to specialize in salts and acids used in the
production of mineral dyes. Becher envisioned that the manufacture and export of
these dyes would finance the other operations of the Kunst- und Werckhaus. He also
envisaged the house attracting artisans from various crafts and that it would
function as a deposit of recipes and descriptions of techniques. Trained artisans
would then be sent out to distribute new processes, new manufactures and inven-
tions. Becher used alchemy to intrigue his patron, who was always interested in the
wealth promised by metallic transmutation, and to link the worlds of the court and
commerce.
Such court projects often took inspiration from the two earliest examples of
spaces bringing together alchemy and the decorative arts at the Medici court in
di peregrino ingegno e raro, come si vede nelle finestre, che sono leggiadre, nelle camere, che sono
artifiziose, ma quella che è principale in su la strada è bella a maraviglia.” On the Casino, see
Covoni, Buontalenti ai tempi Medicei; and Fara, Bernardo Buontalenti, 156–65.
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574–1621) 139
Marco, a complex built in 1442 by the architect Michelozzo Michelozzi (1396–
1472) under the patronage of Cosimo il Vecchio (1389–1464), the Casino
encompassed the Orti medicei, a symbolic place commissioned by Lorenzo il
Magnifico (1449–1492) to host the excellence of Florence’s fine arts (Fig. 7). As
early as 1574, when Francesco I inherited the Orti from his father he used the
existing building as an officina di esperimenti chimici e fisici, thus introducing a
Fig. 5 Francesco I (right) working with his father’s crown. Alessandro Fei (Courtesy of Museo di
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence)
140 M. Beretta
new hierarchy of the arts.36 The Casino incorporated the old buildings into a new
and unusual one, which is particularly evident in the bizarre architectural decora-
tion of the windows (Fig. 8). The building, now a tribunal, has been restructured so
Fig. 7 The Casino di San Marco and the Orti Medicei in a detail of Buonsignori’s Nova
pulcherrimae civitatis Florentiae topographia accuratissime delineata (1584). Private collection
Fig. 6 The Casino di San Marco (Courtesy of Museo Galileo, Florence)
36 Covoni, Buontalenti ai tempi Medicei, 12.
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574–1621) 141
many times that it has progressively lost its original design. As far as I know, no
sixteenth-century drawings or engravings of the original disposition of the residen-
tial rooms and the workshops survive today. Pierfilippo Covoni found a plan of the
first floor of the building post-dating the death of Francesco’s son Don Antonio de’
Medici (1576–1621). Since we know that Don Antonio restructured the building in
1594 we should be cautious about putting too much weight on this document
(Fig. 9). At the beginning of the seventeenth century the fonderia occupied a row
of first floor rooms; in Don Antonio’s day, these were preceded by a library, to
which I will return when describing Don Antonio’s activities. We certainly know
that in Francesco’s Casino there existed a glass works, an alchemical laboratory and
a furnace for producing porcelain: painters, goldsmiths and gem carvers were also
active in the Casino but it is not clear where exactly their workshops were sited, and
Fig. 8 Detail of Buontalenti’s window of the Casino di San Marco
Fig. 9 Plan of the first floor of the Casino di San Marco published by Covoni in 1892b
142 M. Beretta
how they related one to another. On the basis of the evidence available it seems that
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Perifano, Alfredo. 1997. L’Alchimie à la Cour de Côme Ier de Médicis: savoirs, culture et
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Pieraccini, Gaetano. 1924–1925. La Stirpe de’Medici di Cafaggiolo: saggio di ricerche sulla
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in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe, eds. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, 121–
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Somers Cocks, Anna. 1980. Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500–1630.
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Tozzetti, per uso del dottor Ottaviano suo figlio, 17 vols. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di
Firenze, Targioni. Tozzetti, Ms. 189.
Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia, and Alessandro Tosi. 1990. “Flora e Pomona”: L’orticoltura nei
disegni e nelle incisioni dei secoli XVI–XIX. Florence: Olschki.
Wazbinsky, Zygmunt. 1994. Il Cardinale Francesco Maria Del Monte, 1549–1626, 2 vols.
Florence: Olschki.
Zobi, Antonio. 1841. Notizie storiche riguardanti l’Imperiale e Reale Stabilimento dei lavori di
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Zorzi, Elvira Garbero, and Mario Sperenzi. 2001. Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medic.
Florence: Olschki.
The Laboratories of Art and Alchemy at the Uffizi Gallery in Renaissance. . . 127
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino
di San Marco (1574–1621)
Marco Beretta
Abstract Built in 1574 by court engineer and architect Bernardo Buontalenti for
Francesco I de Medici, the Casino di San Marco represents a unique example of a
late Renaissance site of alchemical research, art collecting and political court.
Francesco I’s program to enhance the chemical arts and make it into a body of
Laboratories were not only the workplaces of transmutational alchemists. TheUffizi
and the Casino had little in common with the workplaces of alleged goldmakers
destined to fail and bring their families to financial ruin, as famously depicted by
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c.1525–1569) (Fig. 2). Just as the spaces known as
laboratories encompassed the workplaces of artisans laboring at furnaces and
Introduction xi
using materials and chemical procedures to make both everyday items and objects
of the visual and decorative arts, the activity known as alchemy encompassed more
than attempts to make gold.14 Transmutational alchemy was about the trans-
mutation of all base metals into more noble ones, but chrysopoeia was only one
aspect of alchemy. Alchemy also touched on medicine and chemical manufacture.
It was about the chemical production of things—medicines, porcelain, dyes, and
other products as well as the precious metals—and about the knowledge of how to
produce them. In this sense, “art technologies”—materials and techniques to make
art and knowledge of these materials and techniques—overlapped with alchemy.
Alchemy has deep roots in writings on material transformation from Antiquity.
The productive knowledge associated with material transformation was written
down in recipe books. The Leiden and Stockholm Papyri date to the third century
AD. They contain recipes for the making of gold and silver, for the imitation of
precious stones, and for textile dyes. Whether a recipe is about coloring silver to
make it look like gold or the making of an imitation ruby or another artificial
precious stone, all of the recipes in the Papyri are, indeed, about material trans-
formation and color change as related to the manufacture of luxury goods. As
Matteo Martelli shows in this volume, relatively early on a historical process of
selection, appropriation and differentiation resulted in a more limited definition of
Fig. 2 Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Alchemist’s Family: Al-gemist, 1558 (Courtesy of the
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
14 For the scope of early modern alchemy and the notion of ‘chymistry’, see Principe, Secrets of
Alchemy; and Newman & Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry.”
xii Introduction
alchemy primarily focused on the making of gold and silver. Already around
300 AD, a distinction was introduced between a limited definition of alchemy as
metallic transmutation and a more encompassing definition including productive
knowledge and various artisanal technologies.
Transmitted to Europe, and translated into Latin and the vernaculars, several of
the recipes in the Papyri are still found in collections of recipes in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. More importantly, as Martelli remarks in his essay, the scope of
a recipe collection such as the Mappae clavicula, compiled between the ninth and
the twelfth centuries, is as encompassing as that of the Papyri despite the earlier
attempts to limit alchemy to metallic transmutation only. It should not come as a
surprise then that Sylvie Neven finds it difficult to demarcate between alchemical
and art technological recipes in late medieval collections of recipes. Her contri-
bution to this volume shows that alchemical and art technological recipes shared a
concern with the same materials and artisanal processes. The focus on chromatic
transformation already found in the Papyri continues in fifteenth-century recipes.
Although related to laboratory practices, Neven emphasizes that these recipe
Florence. Two essays in this volume deal with these Florentine workplaces: Fanny
Kieffer discusses the Uffizi, and Marco Beretta the Casino di San Marco. Founded
in 1586 by Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–1587), and developed by his successor,
Ferdinando I (1549–1609), the Uffizi housed the fonderia, a workspace for the arts
of fire. Here medicines were prepared and metals fused. The fonderia was simul-
taneously a pharmacy, an alchemical laboratory, a smithy, a goldsmith’s workshop,
and a confectionary. The activities performed in theUffizi included everything from
preparing jams and sugar sculptures to the production of glass and fireworks (and
less peaceful applications of saltpeter). Francesco I also established the Casino di
San Marco. It included an alchemical laboratory, a furnace for producing porcelain,
and a glass workshop in which, under the direction of Niccolo Sisti, cristallo
(so named because it was as clear as rock crystal) was made, as well as all sorts
of colored glass in imitation of precious stones. Other important activities in the
Casino were the fusion of rock crystal, the counterfeiting of precious stones, the
production of fireworks, and the preparation of pharmaceutical remedies. Similar
activities were developed in the Uffizi and the Casino, and recipes and personnel
travelled between the two places. The only exception was Medici porcelain, which
was exclusively produced in the workshops of the Casino.
In sum, Renaissance courts established spaces where artisanal workshops and
laboratories were brought together facilitating the circulation of materials, people
and knowledge between the worlds of craft (today’s decorative arts) and alchemy.
Art Technologies and Knowledge of Material Transformation
Laboratories were not only the workplaces of transmutational alchemists. TheUffizi
and the Casino had little in common with the workplaces of alleged goldmakers
destined to fail and bring their families to financial ruin, as famously depicted by
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c.1525–1569) (Fig. 2). Just as the spaces known as
laboratories encompassed the workplaces of artisans laboring at furnaces and
Introduction xi
using materials and chemical procedures to make both everyday items and objects
of the visual and decorative arts, the activity known as alchemy encompassed more
than attempts to make gold.14 Transmutational alchemy was about the trans-
mutation of all base metals into more noble ones, but chrysopoeia was only one
aspect of alchemy. Alchemy also touched on medicine and chemical manufacture.
It was about the chemical production of things—medicines, porcelain, dyes, and
other products as well as the precious metals—and about the knowledge of how to
produce them. In this sense, “art technologies”—materials and techniques to make
art and knowledge of these materials and techniques—overlapped with alchemy.
Alchemy has deep roots in writings on material transformation from Antiquity.
The productive knowledge associated with material transformation was written
down in recipe books. The Leiden and Stockholm Papyri date to the third century
AD. They contain recipes for the making of gold and silver, for the imitation of
precious stones, and for textile dyes. Whether a recipe is about coloring silver to
make it look like gold or the making of an imitation ruby or another artificial
precious stone, all of the recipes in the Papyri are, indeed, about material trans-
formation and color change as related to the manufacture of luxury goods. As
pastes, marmalades or candies to conserve the properties of the active ingredients or
amplify their effects. Osio was also in charge of making sugar medicines containing
plants and distillations from the alchemical laboratory.42
Alchemy
The most important and best-documented activity was by far alchemy
(or chymistry) with its various practical applications. The production had several
forms, according to the needs of the court: perfumes and cosmetics, remedies of all
kinds, poisons and antidotes. In contrast to the production of the Casino which, as
we saw, was well known due to the writing of treatises and recipes books, the
fonderia, as far as we know, did not produce any written documentation. So it is
only possible to assess the situation through expense forms, orders and letters of
instruction to Sisti, the maestro della Fonderia, and, above all, through the dosage
booklets given with the remedies.
39 On the confectionary laboratory, see Kieffer, “Confiserie des Offices.”
40 ASF, GM 124, fol. 173; and GM 183, ins. 21, fol. 29.
41 ASF, GM 124, fol. 209’; and GM 183, ins. 2, fol. 21.
42 On sugar and medicine, see Kieffer, “Confiserie des Offices.”
The Laboratories of Art and Alchemy at the Uffizi Gallery in Renaissance. . . 119
The dosage booklets are a distinguishing feature of the fonderia of the Uffizi.
They demonstrate that Uffizi production was designed to be distributed either as
gifts, or as sales products. While the Casino concentrated on experimentation and
methodological or cultural—even mystical—thought, in the Uffizi the recipes have
very little variation and the packaging as well as the dosage booklets are mass-
produced. For the more famous consignees (such as Cardinal Gioiosa) these dosage
booklets are illustrated and sometimes even gilded.
To meet occasional surges in demand, Sisti had to insure a steady supply of raw
materials. Sometimes he had to request Cosimo Latini, the minister of the Gallery,
to obtain rare or very expensive substances, such as amber or musk.43 However,
most of the raw material came from the Vallombrosa abbey. The monks there grew
medicinal plants for the Uffizi and collaborated directly with the fonderia, as was
the case for someone called Giovanni di Giuliano da Montereggi, mentioned as a
erbolaio or herbolista (herbalist) with his assistant Marco di Simone. Both were
paid on a daily and merchandise basis, and don’t appear in the court roles.44
The supply bills coming from Vallombrosa also show which plants are used in
the Uffizi and for which purpose.45 We realise that the plant ingredients of certain
medicines for the grand duke correspond exactly to the recipes recorded in the
Apparato della Fonderia di Don Antonio, so that our hypothesis of a collaboration
between both fonderie during Ferdinando I’s reign was reinforced. Here, for
example, is a supply bill for herbs from the archives:
The day 25th of October, in Florence. The Lord Cosimo Latini director of the Gallery. His
Grace would be pleased to pay [. . .] to have brought to His Grace’s Fonderia juniper berries
to make the oil for the Petechiae Water and to have served for two days mashing the berries
his investigation of the physical world, see Katsiampoura, “Transmutation of Matter,” 665–7.
4 “τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ πηγνύμενον λιθοῦται ει$ ς κρύσταλλον [and] τοῦτο ει$ ς ἀτμίδα λυóμενον ἀὴρ
καθίσταται.”
5 In § 4 Psellos explains the petrifaction of an oak struck by a lightning strike: a quick and sharp
lightning does not only make the oak black, but consumes all its humidity and transforms the wood
into stone.
6 See infra, § 3.
7 The entry continues by telling how the emperor Diocletian (284–305) made to burn all the
Egyptian books on alchemy (in the Greek text: “περὶ χημείας χρυσοῦ και ἀργύρου”); this
information probably depends on the Chronicle (Ἰστορία χρονική) of John of Antioch (active
under Heraclius’s reign, 610–641): see fragment 280 in Roberto, Ioannis Antiocheni Fragmenta.
The Alchemical Art of Dyeing: The Fourfold Division of Alchemy. . . 3
Empire, the same definition had been already given by the Persian scholar al-Nadı̄m
(ninth century AD), who devoted the tenth chapter of his Kitāb al-Fihrist (Book of
Catalogue) to the s
˙
inā‘at al-kı̄mı̄yā’ (art of alchemy): at the very beginning of the
chapter this art is defined again as “the making of gold and silver from other
metals.”8 More than one century later, the Syriac scholar Bar Bahlul (eleventh
century AD) dealt with the same subject in two entries of his lexicon:
1. Duval, Lexicon Syriacum, vol. I, 901:
Kimiya, the dark stone. It is the work of the art of gold and silver. And there is
someone who explains this word from the name kima (the constellation of the
Pleiades), that is the height stars, because (this art) is accomplished by means of
the height mixtures.9
2. Duval, Lexicon Syriacum, vol. I, 904:
Kemela’a, that is the alchemy (kimiya’a) of the seven bodies and of the
various natures; [it includes] arts such as goldsmith’s art and copper, iron, and
glass working.10
Only the last definition includes a wide set of techniques applied to different
substances (among which glass is mentioned), while most of the above-quoted
texts identifies alchemy with the making of gold and silver. The two precious metals
were probably the most attractive outcomes that anyone engaged in alchemical
century but were probably based on previous texts.8 These papyri contain informa-
tion on the imitation of precious materials such as gold, gems and Tyrian purple.
They also have recipes dedicated to the art of dyeing, to chrysography, and to the
making of artificial precious stones.
An echo of these recipes can be found in the Codex Lucensis 490 (Lucca,
Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniàna), also known as the Compositiones ad tingenda
musiva or Compositiones variae. This manuscript, dated from the end of the eighth
or the very beginning of the ninth century, is based on previous Greek sources
compiled around the beginning of the seventh century.9 This recipe book deals with
various artistic techniques, notably the dyeing of skins, the manufacture of pig-
ments, colorants, varnishes and glues, chrysography and the gilding of metals.
The Lucca Manuscript shares content with the Mappae clavicula, compiled
around 800. Parts of this text have far earlier origins and present parallels not
only with the Leyden and Stockholm papyri but also with Syriac translation of
Zosimus and with ps.–Democritus’s writings.10 The nucleus of this text was
probably a Greek alchemical treatise written and translated between the fourth
and the fifth centuries, with additions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.11 The
two main manuscripts are the Corning, Corning Glass Museum, Ms. 5 and Sélestat,
Bibliothèque Humaniste, Ms. 17, but this tradition was also (partly) disseminated
through dozens of manuscripts. The Mappae clavicula contains about 300 recipes
6 Singer, Catalogue of Latin, 38; Principe & DeWitt, Transmutations, 2–3; and Principe, Secrets of
Alchemy, 13.
7 On Leyden, see Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Papyrus P. LEID.X.; On Uppsala, Victoria
Museum, P. HOLM.
8Halleux, Papyrus de Leyde.
9 Hedfors, Compositiones ad tingenda musiva; and Johnson, Compositiones variae.
10 Berthelot & Ruelle, Anciens alchimistes grecs. See also Martelli, Pseudo–Democrito.
11 Halleux & Meyvaert, “Mappae clavicula”; and Berthelot & Duval, Chimie au Moyen-Âge,
vol. I.
Transmission of Alchemical and Artistic Knowledge in German Mediaeval and. . . 25
and descriptions of miscellaneous chemical operations, including instructions for
the manufacture of dyes and pigments, for the gilding and painting on glass, as well
as, among others, metalwork, chrysography, distilling alcohol, making candy, and
creating military devices.12
Mediaeval and Premodern Recipe Books
In mediaeval and premodern times, artistic and alchemical procedures were often
described within compilations of texts that may concurrently address various fields
such as medicine, cooking, botany or pharmacology. They also include magical
recipes, dietetical instructions or advice on home-economics. All these various
disciplines are embedded within the genre of the Fachliteratur.13 This kind of
literature regroups all texts of a utilitarian and informative nature whose content
does not principally concern aesthetic or religious issues, or matters relating to
of Alchemy.”
4Halleux, “Alchimie,” 336–7; Newman, “Technology and Alchemical Debate,” 432–3; Pereira,
“Use of Vernacular Languages,” 336; and Kahn, Alchimie et paracelsisme, 7–8.
5 Halleux, Savoir de la main, 134.
24 S. Neven
of base or impure matter (often metal or stone) into a noble or perfect one.6 To do
so, alchemists used to perform chemical processes and manipulations which resem-
bled those practiced by contemporary artists and artisans.
Thus, in both fields particular importance is placed on craft practices. Both
alchemical and artistic recipe books describe various processes for purifying and
transforming materials, either for improving their properties or in order to use them
for specific purposes. In this context, from a technological point of view, the term
‘transmutation’ could refer to the colouring of glass, the melting and tinting of
metals, the dyeing of stones or gems, or the manufacture of synthetic pigments. A
huge number of recipes are dedicated to procedures for obtaining gold or silver or
gold-silver like substances from base metals (copper, tin, lead, iron, mercury).
The tradition of recipe books has roots deep in Antiquity. Treatises dealing both
with art-technological and alchemical procedures notably survived in the Alexan-
drian Greek papyri preserved in Leyden and Stockholm.7 These date from the third
century but were probably based on previous texts.8 These papyri contain informa-
tion on the imitation of precious materials such as gold, gems and Tyrian purple.
They also have recipes dedicated to the art of dyeing, to chrysography, and to the
making of artificial precious stones.
An echo of these recipes can be found in the Codex Lucensis 490 (Lucca,
Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniàna), also known as the Compositiones ad tingenda
musiva or Compositiones variae. This manuscript, dated from the end of the eighth
or the very beginning of the ninth century, is based on previous Greek sources
compiled around the beginning of the seventh century.9 This recipe book deals with
various artistic techniques, notably the dyeing of skins, the manufacture of pig-
ments, colorants, varnishes and glues, chrysography and the gilding of metals.
The Lucca Manuscript shares content with the Mappae clavicula, compiled
around 800. Parts of this text have far earlier origins and present parallels not
only with the Leyden and Stockholm papyri but also with Syriac translation of
Zosimus and with ps.–Democritus’s writings.10 The nucleus of this text was
probably a Greek alchemical treatise written and translated between the fourth
and the fifth centuries, with additions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.11 The
two main manuscripts are the Corning, Corning Glass Museum, Ms. 5 and Sélestat,
Bibliothèque Humaniste, Ms. 17, but this tradition was also (partly) disseminated
through dozens of manuscripts. The Mappae clavicula contains about 300 recipes
Introduction xiii
It is in this context of alchemical expertise that we should consider the artisans
who adopted the language of alchemy in the early modern period to attract the
attention of patrons. One example can be seen in the description of Black Berthold,
the legendary discoverer of gunpowder in Europe, in the late fifteenth-century
manuscript Feuerwerckbuch. Depicted in the company of a furnace and alembics,
Berthold’s creation of ordnance is identified with alchemy. Black Berthold, the
Feuerwerckbuch reads,
worked with the great alchemy like those masters who are engaged with precious and
valuable things, with silver and gold, and with similar metals. These masters can separate
silver and gold from other precious jewelry, and from other valuable colors which they can
produce. Now this master Berthold wanted to induce a golden coloration. For this he used
salpetre, sulphur, lead and oil. Then he put these ingredients in a container made of copper,
which he sealed completely, exactly as it should be done, but when he put it on fire and the
container became hot, it burst into many pieces.19
The Feuerwerckbuch witnesses material production based on practical chemistry in
terms borrowed from alchemical transmutation, or more precisely, the making of
gold. The analogy was not always with chrysopoeia as such. Vasari’s already
mentioned fashioning of Van Eyck as an alchemist shows that the image of alchemy
as a field of expert inquiry on materials and material transformation was considered
sufficiently positive to identify with. However, we should not forget that Vasari’s
identification of Van Eyck as an alchemist served the purpose of downplaying
Netherlandish art as techne, only a first step in a narrative of art historical progress
culminating in Vasari’s beloved Florentine art.
The epistemic value of techne was shifting at the time of Vasari. Artisans came
to be considered experts of nature likening the artisanal processes of material
transformation undertaken in their workshops to those of nature.20 As Andrea
Bernardoni shows in this volume, Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia is part of this larger
process of shifting epistemic value of artisanal processes. Rejecting transmutational
alchemy as “false” and the alchemists who practiced it as fraudulent, Biringuccio
carved out space for true alchemy as one of the arts of fire. Artisanal workshops,
such as Andrea Verrocchio’s (c.1435–1488) in which Leonardo da Vinci (1452–
1519) apprenticed or Leonardo’s own workplace, shared a material culture with
alchemical laboratories. As we have already pointed out, artisans used similar
equipment and performed “chemical” operations. However, Bernardoni argues,
Biringuccio made the claim that these artisans were the true experts on matter,
materials and material transformation and that artisanal “chemical” operations were
the key to natural knowledge.
One of the readers of Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia was Johannes Mathesius (1504–
1565), a Lutheran preacher in St. Joachimsthal, the center of an important mining
district. In her contribution to this volume, Henrike Haug analyzes Mathesius’s
for the social relations between the world of learning and the creative craftsmen. One century later
a literary figure such as Benedetto Varchi could take special pride in boasting of his friendships
with craftsmen.
17 “Fiorenza è citta fondata sull’arti e traffichi mercantili,” cited in Corazzini, Diario Fiorentino,
273.
18 Baroni Vannucci, Jan Van Der Straet, 397–400.
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574–1621) 133
reflected the grand duke’s alchemical interests.19 This emblematic space had been
preceded by Cosimo I’s fonderia, a distillery located among a few court workshops
and the many display rooms of the Palazzo Vecchio, and would be followed by the
network of workshops and laboratories at the Casino di San Marco, the fonderie of
the Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Pitti.20 Throughout the city innovative spaces with
new purposes were created during this period: natural history museums annexed
to botanical gardens filled with rare plants, the ateliers of glassmakers, and the
creation of new and more specialized apothecary shops, while traditional institu-
tions such as hospitals and public squares assumed new forms. Even such familiar
landmarks as the Loggia dei Lanzi were invested with new significance during the
Cinquecento; originally the site of public assemblies and ceremonies, the Loggia
was now even used on occasion to display natural history exhibits from the Medici
collections for the edification of the general public and, housed a botanical garden
on the roof.21 Monographs on some of these sites have been published, most of
Fig. 2 First engraving and Luigi Alamanni’s and Stradano’s Nova Reperta (1587–1589) (Cour-
tesy Museo Galileo Florence)
19 Although Stradano’s representations of the arts did not explicitly refer to Florence in the
captions, several visual details reveal their connection with the Tuscan capital.
20 On the history of the fonderie, see Piccardi, “Fonderia Medicea di Firenze.”
21 Vossilla, “Cosimo I, lo scrittoio del Bachiacca.”
134 M. Beretta
them by art historians who have underlined the role of the Medici as patrons of the
arts.22 Important as their work has been in documenting the historic relevance of the
new architectural settings, a global picture is still lacking of the nexus between
these sites dedicated to the production of scientific and technical knowledge and the
economic forces that propelled their realization. A recent book on the history of the
Spezieria al Giglio illustrates the profound economic and cultural changes intro-
duced by apothecaries who were only apparently immobile.23 Cosimo I’s policy of
sponsoring the arts and technology as part of his program of economic expansion
forced intellectual elites to take account of a body of knowledge that had been
confined to the margin of the Court, and to re-evaluate their room for manoeuver,
not only conceptually but also architectonically, in terms of their work spaces.
The Casino di San Marco
In this process of reconfiguring Florentine arts and crafts, alchemy played an
exceedingly important role, both as a fashionable scientific discipline with not
particularly strong academic ties and as a useful set of experimental practices in
which several crafts helped artisans quench their thirst for innovation and realize
their socio-cultural ambitions. I shall not explore here the spread of interest in
relatively cheap and humble materials into highly valued objects of art. These
objects were all products of the arts of fire, which according to Vannoccio
Biringuccio (1480–c.1539) included alchemy, and excluded “false alchemy”
concerned with pretentious transmutation.2
In the background of Van Utrecht’s painting, a window opens on to a space in
which a man stands working at a stove with an open fire. Stirring a cauldron, the
man is shown in the material company of bellows, an anvil, a melting and a
distilling furnace, and other equipment related to the worlds of assaying and
metallurgy. Van Utrecht’s background refers to the spaces in which the objects in
the foreground were produced. Were these spaces laboratories or artisanal work-
shops? Were they home to gold- and silversmiths, glassmakers or producers of
porcelain? The difference between workshops and laboratories during this period is
ambiguous, not only in Van Utrecht’s depiction, and the line between the two
spaces is as difficult to draw as that between the arts of fire and alchemy. This book
is concerned with the interconnections and differentiations between foreground and
1My discussion of Van Utrecht’s painting in this and the next paragraph is based on Göttler,
“The Alchemist, the Painter.”
2 For Biringuccio’s attitude towards alchemy, see Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 128–32.
vii
background in Van Utrecht’s painting, between artisanal workshops and alchemical
laboratories, between the material arts and alchemy.
Van Utrecht is one of the heirs of Van Eyck (c.1390–1441). Following Giorgio
Vasari (1511–1574), Karel van Mander (1548–1606) portrayed Van Eyck as an
alchemist and likened his invention of oil paint to alchemical experimentation.3
According to VanMander, Van Eyck experimentedwith varnishes and binding agents,
“and found after much investigation that pigments mixed with such oils became
malleable and dried hard, and having dried became impermeable, and that the oil
made colours livelier, and that they themselves became lustrous without varnishing.”4
It turns out that Van Eyck did not invent oil paint, and neither was he an alchemist.
Nevertheless he would never have been described in those terms had not artists
and alchemists both been considered agents of material transformation. Van
Mander’s description of Van Eyck’s experimentation also reminds us that painters
and alchemists shared materials, and that painters used artificially created pigments,
“made by alchemy” according to Cennino Cennini (c.1370–c.1440). However, this
Fig. 1 Adriaen van Utrecht, Allegory of Fire, 1636 (Courtesy of Royal Museums of Fine Arts of
Belgium, Brussels (Photo: J. Geleyns))
3 Davis, “Renaissance Inventions.”
4Mander, Het schilder-boeck, 199v. Translation in Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon, 79.
viii Introduction
book is not concerned with travelling materials and shared material culture.
Shifting the focus from painting to the decorative arts, this book scrutinizes
epistemic exchanges between producers of the arts of fire and alchemists.
Laboratories and Workshops
What can the evolution of the laboratory, and its shifting relation to the artisanal
about 40 manuscripts produced in Northern Europe between the fourteenth and the
sixteenth centuries, this paper investigates the context behind these writings, and the
various ways alchemical and artisanal recipes were embedded within recipe books.
It also proposes some clues to assist in locating, identifying and demarcating
alchemical writings within the literature of recipes.
In the Middle Ages and premodern period, alchemical knowledge and practice was
frequently transmitted via collections of recipes grouped concomitantly with artistic
instructions. Presented in the form of a succession of more or less short notes, these
S. Neven (*)
FRS-F.N.R.S, University of Liège (ULg), ‘Transitions’ Liège, Belgium
e-mail: Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
S. Dupré (ed.), Laboratories of Art, Archimedes 37,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05065-2_2, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
23
mailto:Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
writings describe processes for the manufacture, preparation and application of
various types of materials and substances. The majority are anonymous compi-
lations of texts, which may originate from older or undetermined authorities.
Hundreds of such collections of recipes dealing both with alchemical and
art-technological procedures were produced and disseminated in Northern Europe
from the fourteenth century on, especially in German-speaking countries.
Drawing on a delimited corpus of about 40 representative German manuscripts
dated from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, this paper investigates the
connections and similarities between these two fields and examines the various
ways alchemical and artistic instructions were embedded within recipe books.1 It
argues that textual form and lexical proximities within recipes from these different
disciplines may lead to association, contamination and confusion within this textual
genre. It finally suggests some clues to help locate, distinguish and demarcate
alchemical content within the literature of recipes.
Art and Alchemy Within Recipe Books
At first sight, any overlap between alchemy and art-technology within recipe books
can be broadly explained by the mutual use of various materials and substances
such as “common stones, gems, and types of marble, gold and other metals, sulfurs,
salts, and inks, azures, minium, and other colors, oils and burning pitches, and
countless other things.”2 More precisely, the field of art-technology encompasses a
large range of craft practices involved in the production of pieces of art (including
those which incorporate such substances). This ‘hand’ knowledge, is related to the
mechanical arts and is divorced from the philosophical or speculative dimension.
Yet, alchemy could be described as the practical, philosophical and medical search
for the perfecting of base material substances and also for the extending of life.3
The theoretical and practical aspects of alchemy involve both the study of all
inanimate or animate things made from the elements and the observation and
imitation of natural processes within the laboratory.4 In this context, alchemy
could be seen as a mechanical art, in the sense that it works on matter but is also
a liberal art, as it attempts to explain matter in its composition and its transforma-
tion.5 In the practical sense, one of the main goals of alchemy is the transmutation
1 The main data and characteristics of these manuscripts are given in Appendix.
2 Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon, 39–40.
3 Perception and definition of alchemy is not chronologically constant and has been the subject of
similar to the one illustrated in Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia (fol. 43v), where the
techniques of shaping glass artifacts both by free blowing and by blowing into a
mold are shown. The furnace painted by Butteri suggests that he was illustrating the
glass works set up by the Venetian glassmaker Bortolo who arrived in Florence in
Fig. 4 Francesco I (left) visiting his glass work. Giovanni Maria Butteri (1570–1572) (Courtesy
Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Florence)
138 M. Beretta
1569 when the Studiolowas taking shape.31 This is confirmed by the fact that on the
right side of the painting, we see material for the construction of a new furnace and
on the left Francesco is examining finished piece of glassware. The size of the glass
works is impressive and the entrance shown in the background of the painting with
a couple of distinguished Florentine courtiers or citizens just inside the door opens
up a glimpse of the Loggiato of the Galleria della Uffizi.32 Between Stradano’s
painting of the alchemical laboratory and Butteri’s of the glass works, a painting by
Alessandro Fei (1543–1592) depicts a man who seems to be Prince Francesco
working on the gem-studded grand ducal crown in the atelier of a goldsmith and
jeweler (Fig. 5). The arrangement of the painting suggests that glassmaking and
jewelry were the arts most closely connected with alchemy. Their connections
inspired Francesco to create a new decorative scenario, dominated by alchemy,
by which illustrate the relation between arts and nature.
Francesco was extremely keen, even more than his father, to promote the study
of the natural sciences and the arts related to them. His passion for the chemical arts
was so strong that in 1560, when he was only 19, he was told off by his brother
Giovanni for attending the works of the fonderia all day long.33 It was Francesco
who, in September 1569, charged the architect, engineer and inventor Bernardo
Buontalenti (1531–1608), who had been one of his teachers since 1550, to oversee
the construction of Bortolo’s new glass furnace and a new fonderia.34 Francesco I
also exploited Buontalenti’s versatile skills in the works of the fusion of precious
stones and, in particular of rock crystal. Francesco’s project to enhance his multi-
faceted interest in the alchemical and chemical arts found a new, imposing site with
the construction of the Casino di San Marco (1567–1574), a sumptuous palace
designed by Buontalenti (Fig. 6).35 Across the street from the Convent of San
31As pointed out by Heikamp. Studien, 63–9.
32 At the time the ground floor of the Uffizi was already completed. I thank Suzy Butters for
providing me with this information.
33 “Guardi di non si profonder troppo nel piacer della Fonderia, che qua vien detto, che ella non
esce mai et massimamente il giorno; talché al ritorno nostro speriamo di veder qualche nuova e
Great — I found additional materials mentioned in the text that weren’t in the first list of 50. Many come from recipe books, Medici laboratories, and artisanal practices like porcelain, confectionery, fireworks, and pharmacy. Here are more to add:
📌 So far we have at least 86 distinct materials documented. These expand beyond the initial metals, minerals, and pigments to include ceramics, acids, dyes, perfumes, medicinal plants, confectionary, and fireworks ingredients — all showing how alchemy and artisanal culture overlapped in courts and workshops.
Do you want me to merge everything into a single extended table (1–86) with columns for Material, Alchemy use, Artisanal use? That would give you a clean, at-a-glance resource.
make a list of artistic processes
{"queries": ["artistic processes mentioned in the book", "artisanal and artistic techniques in alchemy and art technology", "processes in dyeing, glassmaking, metallurgy, and porcelain", "artistic techniques in the Uffizi and Casino di San Marco", "artistic or artisanal processes in recipe books"]}
[Web browsing]
contemporary workshop or laboratory practices.48
First of all, the textual environment and the diversity of the subjects bound
together with the artistic and alchemical recipes in a same book, lead to the
conclusion that these compilations were mainly read by scholars primarily inter-
ested in natural philosophy and were not intended for contemporary practical use.
Moreover, it has been frequently stated that craft practices were transmitted orally,
Fig. 1 Additional instruction due to Seidel, Munchen, Cgm 4117, fol. 1rv (Courtesy of
Münchener Digitalierungszentrum)
48 Clarke, “Codicological Indicators”; and Neven, Recettes artistiques, 16–23.
Transmission of Alchemical and Artistic Knowledge in German Mediaeval and. . . 35
from the master to the apprentice.49 A large number of the manuscripts of this study
result from copying and compilation processes undertaken by scribes. As they were
copied in a context outside the workshop or the laboratory, these recipes were not
revised and, consequently, conveyed an anachronistic technical tradition that
became more and more outdated.
Such observations seem to argue against the view that sees these books as
manuals written for the practitioner. But neither were these compendium written
purely for scholarly purposes, deprived of any practical function. In parallel to the
data that could be considered part of the technical heritage of a earlier period, these
recipe books also contain more recent practical instructions—coming from contem-
porary artists and practicing scholars or from the scribe’s own experiments, as the
examples of Seidel, Freising and Schobinger discussed above illustrate. Even when
the writing of these instructions, verbalized in the rhetoric of the recipes, was
carried out by scribes, data were not blindly copied. Scribes organised, assembled,
completed or corrected when they felt it necessary. Thus, even if they were not the
author per se, in the sense that they were not the origin or the source of the technical
or chemical procedures they wrote down, they accomplished a set of activities
linked to ‘authorship’.50 Scribes also made attempts to ensure that the recipes could
be consulted at need: they composed tables of contents or indexes, they introduced
titles within the margins and many other details which attest to a real desire to
deliver usable information. In this context the marginal notes and additions made by
the scribes/authors of the recipe book are of interest as most of them are technical
comments testifying practical interest in both alchemical and artistic instructions.
Several marginal annotations due to Seidel’s hand punctuate the Cgm 4117 and
consist in personal commentaries regarding the technical procedures he records.
For example, on folio 53r, Seidel compares two ways for the melting of crystal.
Concerning the first process he states in the margin that this ‘art’ was not of use to
him as a better (method) is delivered on 219.51 Then on folio 219, he indicates
another method for the same technical procedure, giving as title “How one should
masterfully melt crystal.”52
In this sense, the scribes at the root of these recipe books created not simply a
copy but a unique work, which reflected their own interests, their cultural and life
context and sometimes their intention, which was to deliver practical and useful
instruction.
Laboratories were not only the workplaces of transmutational alchemists. TheUffizi
and the Casino had little in common with the workplaces of alleged goldmakers
destined to fail and bring their families to financial ruin, as famously depicted by
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c.1525–1569) (Fig. 2). Just as the spaces known as
laboratories encompassed the workplaces of artisans laboring at furnaces and
Introduction xi
using materials and chemical procedures to make both everyday items and objects
of the visual and decorative arts, the activity known as alchemy encompassed more
than attempts to make gold.14 Transmutational alchemy was about the trans-
mutation of all base metals into more noble ones, but chrysopoeia was only one
aspect of alchemy. Alchemy also touched on medicine and chemical manufacture.
It was about the chemical production of things—medicines, porcelain, dyes, and
other products as well as the precious metals—and about the knowledge of how to
produce them. In this sense, “art technologies”—materials and techniques to make
art and knowledge of these materials and techniques—overlapped with alchemy.
Alchemy has deep roots in writings on material transformation from Antiquity.
The productive knowledge associated with material transformation was written
down in recipe books. The Leiden and Stockholm Papyri date to the third century
AD. They contain recipes for the making of gold and silver, for the imitation of
precious stones, and for textile dyes. Whether a recipe is about coloring silver to
make it look like gold or the making of an imitation ruby or another artificial
precious stone, all of the recipes in the Papyri are, indeed, about material trans-
formation and color change as related to the manufacture of luxury goods. As
Matteo Martelli shows in this volume, relatively early on a historical process of
selection, appropriation and differentiation resulted in a more limited definition of
Fig. 2 Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Alchemist’s Family: Al-gemist, 1558 (Courtesy of the
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
14 For the scope of early modern alchemy and the notion of ‘chymistry’, see Principe, Secrets of
Alchemy; and Newman & Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry.”
xii Introduction
alchemy primarily focused on the making of gold and silver. Already around
300 AD, a distinction was introduced between a limited definition of alchemy as
metallic transmutation and a more encompassing definition including productive
knowledge and various artisanal technologies.
Transmitted to Europe, and translated into Latin and the vernaculars, several of
the recipes in the Papyri are still found in collections of recipes in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. More importantly, as Martelli remarks in his essay, the scope of
a recipe collection such as the Mappae clavicula, compiled between the ninth and
the twelfth centuries, is as encompassing as that of the Papyri despite the earlier
attempts to limit alchemy to metallic transmutation only. It should not come as a
surprise then that Sylvie Neven finds it difficult to demarcate between alchemical
and art technological recipes in late medieval collections of recipes. Her contri-
bution to this volume shows that alchemical and art technological recipes shared a
concern with the same materials and artisanal processes. The focus on chromatic
transformation already found in the Papyri continues in fifteenth-century recipes.
Although related to laboratory practices, Neven emphasizes that these recipe
to be brought to its perfection. Moreover, the potter’s glazes and colors are all substances of
various metals or impure minerals and therefore belong to fire. Since it is my intention to
treat of fire, minerals, and metals for you, I surely should not have omitted this, particularly
because it is a necessary art which enriches and is greatly praised both for its ingenuity and
its beauty.4
Like the other arts treated in the Pirotechnia, the action of the fire on base earths
and minerals provided integral transformation in the objects shaped by the potter’s
hands. At the time of Biringuccio’s writing, the potter’s art was on the threshold of a
paradigm shift that would create a marked division between craft knowledge and
theory based practice, setting two separate courses for ceramic innovation in the
later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His citation of alchemy as one of “two
sources as [pottery’s] principal basis,” is referential to the provision of purified
minerals and “elemental mixtures.”5 However, it also foreshadowed the intellectual
engagement of chymists in the quest for the production of European porcelain,
bringing the weight of the older alchemical tradition to bear.
Prior to the fourteenth century, European pottery was external to the hierarchy of
the esteemed arts, such as metallurgy, glassmaking, painting, and dyeing. The
extensively copied treatise De diversis artibus, composed in the thirteenth century
by the Benedictine monk Theophilus, thoroughly introduces the full range of
artisanal productions valued in Europe in its first book.6 Pottery is entirely absent
from this discussion of laudable arts and only appears once in the text as a canvas
for enameling.7 This is a continuation of pottery’s position in the classical period,
when earthen objects were valued as trade goods, everyday wares, or a medium for
other decoration, not for their individual aesthetic form.8
It was not until advancements in the production of luxury quality European
pottery during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that the cultural perception of
the material changed significantly, driving engagement by the upper classes and
natural philosophers. An example can be found in a letter from Lorenzo de Medici
(1449–1492) to the Malatesta family in 1490, favorably comparing their gift of
maiolica to silver objects, which is one of the earliest pieces of documentary
4 Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (1942), 392.
5 Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (1942), 392.
6 For various editions of the treatise, see Theophilus, Essay Upon Various Arts (1847), The Various
Arts (1961), and On Diverse Arts (1963).
7 “Quam si diligentius perscruteris, illic inuenies quicquid in diuersorum colorum generibus et
mixturis habet Graecia, quicquid in electrorum operositate seu nigelli uarietate nouit Ruscia,
quicquid ductili uel fusili seu interrasili opere distinguit Arabia, quicquid in uasorum diuersitate
seu gemmarum ossiumue sculptura auro decorat Italia, quicquid in fenestrarum pretiosa uarietate
diligit Francia, quicquid in auri, argenti, cupri et ferri lignorum lapidumque subtilitate sollers
pentry. One of the most important works created in this workshop when Leonardo
was still one of Verrocchio’s assistants was the copper sphere on the top of the
lantern on Filippo Brunelleschi’s (1377–1446) dome.18 In Verrocchio’s workshop,
assistants and pupils, including Leonardo, prepared colors, glues, solvents, waxes,
acids, alloys and so on. Being an artist in the Renaissance meant being part of a
wider shared material culture as artisans and chymists used and developed the same
materials and techniques.
In Biringuccio’s book we find a description of a brass-making workshop he
visited in Milan that discusses the organization of the workshop and the artisans’
awareness of the technological and epistemological value of their works:
[. . .] So that whoever entered that shop and saw the activity of so many persons would, I
think, believe as I did that he had entered an Inferno, nay, on the contrary, a Paradise, where
there was a mirror in which sparkled all the beauty of genius and the power of art.19
Biringuccio underlined the frenetic and very organized work in the workshop
stressing the beauty of the mind of the artisans and the power of art. The harmo-
nious cooperation between artisans and the plain consciousness of the processes of
the art transformed the hell of hard and dirty metallurgical work into the heaven of
the pursuit of the artistic goal. This oxymoron referred to the infernal and paradi-
siacal condition of art, exalting the extremely difficult process in which raw
material is transformed into artifact, giving back an important social value to
manual work.
16 For a recent description of the chemical utensils found in the Schloss Oberstockstall laboratory,
see Martinón-Torres, “Tools of Chymist”; “Probierbüchlein,” 166–9; Biringuccio, De la
pirotechnia (1977) 47r; and Agricola, De re metallica (1556), 174–208.
17Michelangelo, Carteggio, vol. I, 20–43.
18 The sphere was three metres in diameter and was composed of several copper gores, soldered
together on the top of the dome with a solar welder. For studies on the dome of Florence and the
possible involvement of Leonardo see, Scaglia, “Studi tecnologici di Leonardo,” 6–16; Di
Pasquale, “Machinery of Construction Site”; and Galluzzi, Mechanical Marvels, 18–25, 99–116.
19 Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (1942), 72. For the Italian, see Biringuccio, De la pirotechnia (1977),
fol. 20r.
Artisanal Processes and Epistemological Debate in the Works of Leonardo. . . 57
In the Renaissance technical tradition the bottega (workshop) was a place for
work and not yet a space to conduct modern scientific research. Research on
technology and natural phenomena was carried out thanks to the curiosity and the
free enterprise of each individual artist; workshop mentality was conservative and
technical knowledge was usually applied to technologically consolidated goals. The
workshop was a place to produce specific artistic, technological and pharmacolog-
ical objects yet it offered artisans the tools and the experiences to venture beyond
the ‘normalized activity’. We know several cases of painters involved in alchemy,
similar to the one illustrated in Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia (fol. 43v), where the
techniques of shaping glass artifacts both by free blowing and by blowing into a
mold are shown. The furnace painted by Butteri suggests that he was illustrating the
glass works set up by the Venetian glassmaker Bortolo who arrived in Florence in
Fig. 4 Francesco I (left) visiting his glass work. Giovanni Maria Butteri (1570–1572) (Courtesy
Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Florence)
138 M. Beretta
1569 when the Studiolowas taking shape.31 This is confirmed by the fact that on the
right side of the painting, we see material for the construction of a new furnace and
on the left Francesco is examining finished piece of glassware. The size of the glass
works is impressive and the entrance shown in the background of the painting with
a couple of distinguished Florentine courtiers or citizens just inside the door opens
up a glimpse of the Loggiato of the Galleria della Uffizi.32 Between Stradano’s
painting of the alchemical laboratory and Butteri’s of the glass works, a painting by
Alessandro Fei (1543–1592) depicts a man who seems to be Prince Francesco
working on the gem-studded grand ducal crown in the atelier of a goldsmith and
jeweler (Fig. 5). The arrangement of the painting suggests that glassmaking and
jewelry were the arts most closely connected with alchemy. Their connections
inspired Francesco to create a new decorative scenario, dominated by alchemy,
by which illustrate the relation between arts and nature.
Francesco was extremely keen, even more than his father, to promote the study
of the natural sciences and the arts related to them. His passion for the chemical arts
was so strong that in 1560, when he was only 19, he was told off by his brother
Giovanni for attending the works of the fonderia all day long.33 It was Francesco
who, in September 1569, charged the architect, engineer and inventor Bernardo
Buontalenti (1531–1608), who had been one of his teachers since 1550, to oversee
the construction of Bortolo’s new glass furnace and a new fonderia.34 Francesco I
also exploited Buontalenti’s versatile skills in the works of the fusion of precious
stones and, in particular of rock crystal. Francesco’s project to enhance his multi-
faceted interest in the alchemical and chemical arts found a new, imposing site with
the construction of the Casino di San Marco (1567–1574), a sumptuous palace
designed by Buontalenti (Fig. 6).35 Across the street from the Convent of San
31As pointed out by Heikamp. Studien, 63–9.
32 At the time the ground floor of the Uffizi was already completed. I thank Suzy Butters for
providing me with this information.
33 “Guardi di non si profonder troppo nel piacer della Fonderia, che qua vien detto, che ella non
esce mai et massimamente il giorno; talché al ritorno nostro speriamo di veder qualche nuova e
literature regroups all texts of a utilitarian and informative nature whose content
does not principally concern aesthetic or religious issues, or matters relating to
emotional purpose.14 A great number of these writings share the same format and
are quite similar in terms of their external and internal characteristics. Within these
compilations, the recipe frequently appears as the “shortest element in which the
text could ultimately be divided.”15 This observation, although initially relating to
the field of alchemy, can also be applied to recipe books in general during the
Middle Ages and the premodern period. Robert Halleux underlined the similarity in
format between the mediaeval treatises of alchemy and the so-called technical
recipe books. He states that, whatever subject the recipe books are dedicated to,
they all present a similar structure, from the earliest Mesopotamian examples to the
pharmacopoeia texts of the sixteenth century. We could refine this definition by
adding that the recipe is the smallest ‘independent’ element into which these texts
could be divided. In fact, a recipe could be seen as an independent text in itself and
could thus be dissociated from its original recipe book and be introduced into the
pages of another manuscript. For this reason, it may be argued that the recipe, as a
type text, could be considered as a structural unit common to several disciplines
embedded within the manuscripts belonging to the Fachliteratur and serve to define
a genre in itself. As Bruno Laurioux noted “[the recipe] gives the tone and
standardizes, by its repetitive structure, the corpus of this literary genre.”16
12 Smith & Hawthorne, “Mappae Clavicula.”
13 The Fachliteratur has been the subject of various studies. Concerning the German production,
see notably Eis,Mittelalterliche Fachliteratur, and more recently Haage &Wegner, Fachliteratur
der Artes.
14 Jansen–Sieben, Repertorium, XII.
15 Halleux, Textes alchimiques, 74.
16 “C’est elle qui donne le ton et uniformise, par sa structure répétitive, l’ensemble de ce genre
littéraire.” (Laurioux, Livres de cuisine médiévaux, 13).
26 S. Neven
Craft practices, alchemical treatises and artists’ recipe books thus share parts of
the same specific syntax, the frequent use of the imperative form but also some
particular verbs (such as ‘grind’, ‘mix’, ‘purify’) and vocabulary. For example, the
first alchemists used the word tinctura to refer to the tinting or the dyeing of metals,
stones or clothes.17 These methods notably explained how to dye metals yellow or
white—so (apparently) how to transmute them into gold or silver. They also
described various ways to counterfeit precious stones.18 In this context, the term
tinctura does not relate to the artisanal practice of dyeing, but instead describes the
procedure for executing the transition from one colour to another, through the steps
of the alchemical process. Another example is provided by the terms ‘mercury’ and
‘sulfur’. According to the context, these may alternatively designate the common
substances used for making vermilion or the two principles of which all metals were
thought to be composed in different proportions.19
Thus, both artistic practices and alchemy required procedures involving precise
and specifically defined actions, prescriptions and ingredients. So both used an
identical rhetorical recipe formulation that reflects a ‘step by step’ procedure.
about 40 manuscripts produced in Northern Europe between the fourteenth and the
sixteenth centuries, this paper investigates the context behind these writings, and the
various ways alchemical and artisanal recipes were embedded within recipe books.
It also proposes some clues to assist in locating, identifying and demarcating
alchemical writings within the literature of recipes.
In the Middle Ages and premodern period, alchemical knowledge and practice was
frequently transmitted via collections of recipes grouped concomitantly with artistic
instructions. Presented in the form of a succession of more or less short notes, these
S. Neven (*)
FRS-F.N.R.S, University of Liège (ULg), ‘Transitions’ Liège, Belgium
e-mail: Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
S. Dupré (ed.), Laboratories of Art, Archimedes 37,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05065-2_2, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
23
mailto:Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
writings describe processes for the manufacture, preparation and application of
various types of materials and substances. The majority are anonymous compi-
lations of texts, which may originate from older or undetermined authorities.
Hundreds of such collections of recipes dealing both with alchemical and
art-technological procedures were produced and disseminated in Northern Europe
from the fourteenth century on, especially in German-speaking countries.
Drawing on a delimited corpus of about 40 representative German manuscripts
dated from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, this paper investigates the
connections and similarities between these two fields and examines the various
ways alchemical and artistic instructions were embedded within recipe books.1 It
argues that textual form and lexical proximities within recipes from these different
disciplines may lead to association, contamination and confusion within this textual
genre. It finally suggests some clues to help locate, distinguish and demarcate
alchemical content within the literature of recipes.
Art and Alchemy Within Recipe Books
At first sight, any overlap between alchemy and art-technology within recipe books
can be broadly explained by the mutual use of various materials and substances
such as “common stones, gems, and types of marble, gold and other metals, sulfurs,
salts, and inks, azures, minium, and other colors, oils and burning pitches, and
countless other things.”2 More precisely, the field of art-technology encompasses a
large range of craft practices involved in the production of pieces of art (including
those which incorporate such substances). This ‘hand’ knowledge, is related to the
mechanical arts and is divorced from the philosophical or speculative dimension.
Yet, alchemy could be described as the practical, philosophical and medical search
for the perfecting of base material substances and also for the extending of life.3
The theoretical and practical aspects of alchemy involve both the study of all
inanimate or animate things made from the elements and the observation and
imitation of natural processes within the laboratory.4 In this context, alchemy
could be seen as a mechanical art, in the sense that it works on matter but is also
a liberal art, as it attempts to explain matter in its composition and its transforma-
tion.5 In the practical sense, one of the main goals of alchemy is the transmutation
1 The main data and characteristics of these manuscripts are given in Appendix.
2 Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon, 39–40.
3 Perception and definition of alchemy is not chronologically constant and has been the subject of
As stated above, whether alchemical or art-technological, the recipes contained
in these manuscripts are presented in the form of a formula which, in most cases,
enumerates the ingredients and the actions necessary to produce a particular
preparation. In addition artistic recipes sometimes indicate the recommended
geographical provenance or grade of quality of the ingredients. Suggestions for
possible substitutions might also appear. This sort of information is rare in alchem-
ical recipes.
The length of a recipe depends not only on the number of ingredients involved
but also on its complexity, the number of steps necessary to obtain the final product.
A recipe can be anything from one sentence to several pages within a manuscript.
Alternatively, a recipe may appear merely as a brief list of ingredients, without any
other additional information. In fact, two categories of recipe can be distinguished:
the Vollrezepte (detailed recipes) and the Kurzrezepte (abbreviated recipes).55 In
the first, the quantities and the various steps are indicated. In the second, only the
55Halleux, “Alchimie,” 343.
Transmission of Alchemical and Artistic Knowledge in German Mediaeval and. . . 39
ingredients are cited: the procedure is sketched out or omitted altogether and the
rest is left to the ingenuity of the user. This second category is more common in the
case of artistic recipes; a great many of the recipes dedicated to the manufacture of
ink are written in the form of a very short list of ingredients. It is less common for
the alchemical recipes to be presented this way.
The title of a recipe may also give an indication of the final product to be obtained
and, in some cases, specify the use of the product. Again, this is particularly true for
artistic instructions and is less observable for alchemical ones.
For both types of instructions (alchemical or artistic), some steps could be
omitted or were left to the interpretation of the reader. Specified quantities may
be missing in both fields. When quantities are given, artistic recipes are far more
likely to use local measurements, whereas in alchemical instructions, the quanti-
ties—if mentioned at all—are more often expressed in terms of ratio or proportions.
In some cases, these proportions are not ‘practically’ correct. A very well-known
example is the proportion of mercury and sulphur proposed by mediaeval recipes
for the production of vermilion which is invariably incorrect.56 Very rarely are the
correct chemical proportions cited.
In parallel, alchemical writings may involve the use of symbols or metaphors to
designate substances and practices. In consequence, the way an alchemical recipe
was received would depend on the degree of experience of the reader-practitioner
reading it. On the one hand, the (sometimes) metaphorical or codified language
as well as the approximations stressed the arcane nature of these recipes and
contributed to their secrecy. On the other hand, the omitted information may have
been complemented by data only known to some readers and not recorded by the
copyist who conserves only the essential part of the recipe. If so then this kind of
recipe was only meant to be accessible and useable by those practitioners who could
easily fill in the lacuna that punctuated the text of the recipe.
As previously observed, citations of authority were frequently used by the scribes
of the manuscripts. However, the tendency for an older authority to be cited in the
recipe books is particularly characteristic of the alchemical writings and less typical
of the art-technological recipes. As stated above, such citations primarily served to
legitimate the technical and chemical procedures. In addition, most alchemical
recipes describe processes and practical results to validate previously enounced
molta scienza, poiché egli non sapeva, lasciamo stare degli altri, ma che né Alberto ancora
n’avesse scritto; ma comunque sia, gli semo obbligati grandissimamente essendo stato, oltre la
grandissima pratica, uomo molto leale e veritiero, e liberalissimo dei suoi tesori.” (Varchi,
Questione sull’alchimia, 63–4).
10 Bernardoni, Conoscenza del fare, 31–3.
Artisanal Processes and Epistemological Debate in the Works of Leonardo. . . 55
alchemy and from uncontrolled techniques. Both of these authors gave credit to
alchemy for producing codified procedures to transform substances and, although it
is extremely difficult to talk about their role in the development of chemical
technology, we do not have any doubts about their important contribution as pro-
tagonists and witnesses of the epistemological and technological transformations in
the field of ‘science and technology of matter’.
If we focus our attention on all the artisanal processes of substance transforma-
tion known and practiced during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it is easy to
show that they do not fit perfectly within the domain traced by alchemy. This
epistemological tension is usually neutralized by saying that alchemical and met-
allurgical disciplines are intricately interwoven and alchemists were involved in the
development of metallurgy.11 If one supposes chemistry did not exist as an inde-
pendent and autonomous discipline before the end of the seventeenth century then
speaking on this topic from a historical perspective in an Italian technical cultural
context, some ‘superior artisans’ or ‘artist-engineers’ can be seen as having dis-
tanced themselves from alchemy by relocating its technology inside a new episte-
mological context in which chemical arts were developed and codified separately.12
This context applies not only to metallurgical assaying but, more generally, it
defines the area of the ‘perfective arts’, including all arts that use fire to work and
transformmatter.13 In this trading zone, where Latin was scarcely known and where
competition with alchemists was felt more keenly, a sub-group of artisans, artists
and engineers kept their distance from alchemy to define a new field of ‘chemical
technology’.14
Artisanal processes could be seen as a sort of ‘melting pot’ of interwoven
practical and theoretical knowledge coming from the world of crafts, including
alchemy. It is prevalently in the world of artisans that we find references to
‘chemical activity’ during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Before there
were signs of a laboratory as a separate place—the most ancient plans to build a
chemical laboratory are in the Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (Wandsbek,
1598) by Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) and in the Commentariorum alchymiae (Frank-
furt, 1606) by Andreas Libavius (1560–1616), ‘chemical operations’ could be
found everywhere ‘perfective arts’ were practiced.15 This was in alchemist’s
laboratories, such as the one in Schloss Oberstockstall (Austria) in the sixteenth
century, and assaying workshops, described in the anonymous Probierbuchlein
Graeco-Arabica 4: 21–24.
Westerink, Leendert G. 1948. Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina. Nijmegen: Centrale
Drukkerij N.V.
22 M. Martelli
Transmission of Alchemical and Artistic
Knowledge in German Mediaeval
and Premodern Recipe Books
Sylvie Neven
Abstract In the Middle Ages and premodern period, artisanal knowledge was
transmitted via collections of recipes often grouped concomitantly with alchemical
texts and instructions. Except for some very well-known artistic treatises, e.g. works
by Eraclius or the Schedula diversarum artium, attributed to Theophilus, detection
and delimitation of alchemical content within recipe books has been rare and
fraught with difficulty. Alchemy can be defined as the ‘art of transmutation’,
referring to the perfection of base or impure matter (often metal or stone) into
perfect substances. Alchemical procedures thus rely on artisanal/craft practices.
Any overlap between alchemy and art-technological procedures can be explained
by the use of identical materials and substances. Both are concerned with the
description of colours—especially in processes of change, the making of pigments,
the production of artificial gemstones, the imitation of gold and silver and the
transmutation of materials. Both require procedures involving precise and specifi-
cally defined actions, prescriptions and ingredients. So both ultimately use identical
rhetorical formulations that reflect a ‘step by step’ procedure. Assuming that
alchemical and artistic texts have the same textual format, raises the question: did
they also have the same types of production and dissemination? Using a corpus of
about 40 manuscripts produced in Northern Europe between the fourteenth and the
sixteenth centuries, this paper investigates the context behind these writings, and the
various ways alchemical and artisanal recipes were embedded within recipe books.
It also proposes some clues to assist in locating, identifying and demarcating
alchemical writings within the literature of recipes.
In the Middle Ages and premodern period, alchemical knowledge and practice was
frequently transmitted via collections of recipes grouped concomitantly with artistic
instructions. Presented in the form of a succession of more or less short notes, these
S. Neven (*)
FRS-F.N.R.S, University of Liège (ULg), ‘Transitions’ Liège, Belgium
e-mail: Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
S. Dupré (ed.), Laboratories of Art, Archimedes 37,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05065-2_2, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
23
mailto:Sylvie.Neven@ulg.ac.be
writings describe processes for the manufacture, preparation and application of
various types of materials and substances. The majority are anonymous compi-
lations of texts, which may originate from older or undetermined authorities.
Hundreds of such collections of recipes dealing both with alchemical and
art-technological procedures were produced and disseminated in Northern Europe
from the fourteenth century on, especially in German-speaking countries.
Drawing on a delimited corpus of about 40 representative German manuscripts
dated from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, this paper investigates the
connections and similarities between these two fields and examines the various
ways alchemical and artistic instructions were embedded within recipe books.1 It
Social Origins of Modern Science; Maccagni, “Leggere, scrivere e disegnare”; Galluzzi, “Portraits
of Machines; Smith, Body of the Artisan; Halleux, Savoir de la main, 102–39; and Long, Artisan/
Practitioners, 10–29.
13 Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 17–20.
14 Long, Artisan/Practitioners, 94–6. See also, Galison, “Trading Zone.”
15 Hannaway, “Laboratory Design.”
56 A. Bernardoni
(1513), in Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia, and in Agricola’s De re metallica.16 Further
nascent signs of a distinct and autonomous chemical laboratory with purpose-built
‘chemical’ equipment can be found in the more general context of the Renaissance
artist’s workshop culture. Here, together with the fine arts such as painting, sculp-
ture, architecture and jewelry making, metal carpentry, and gun casting, we find
operations that use substance transformation, such as distillation and sublimation.
There is evidence that even the most important names in the history of art were
involved in such workshop activities, for instance Michelangelo (1475–1564),
whose Florentine workshop, as mentioned in his correspondence with his brother,
was involved in generic metal carpentry such as the casting and welding of
damaged swords and other craft objects.17 Further evidence of artists’ versatile
activities during the Renaissance can be found in Andrea Verrocchio’s (1435–
1488) workshop, which specialized in painting, sculpture, casting and metal car-
pentry. One of the most important works created in this workshop when Leonardo
was still one of Verrocchio’s assistants was the copper sphere on the top of the
lantern on Filippo Brunelleschi’s (1377–1446) dome.18 In Verrocchio’s workshop,
assistants and pupils, including Leonardo, prepared colors, glues, solvents, waxes,
acids, alloys and so on. Being an artist in the Renaissance meant being part of a
wider shared material culture as artisans and chymists used and developed the same
materials and techniques.
In Biringuccio’s book we find a description of a brass-making workshop he
visited in Milan that discusses the organization of the workshop and the artisans’
awareness of the technological and epistemological value of their works:
[. . .] So that whoever entered that shop and saw the activity of so many persons would, I
think, believe as I did that he had entered an Inferno, nay, on the contrary, a Paradise, where
there was a mirror in which sparkled all the beauty of genius and the power of art.19
Biringuccio underlined the frenetic and very organized work in the workshop
stressing the beauty of the mind of the artisans and the power of art. The harmo-
nious cooperation between artisans and the plain consciousness of the processes of
the art transformed the hell of hard and dirty metallurgical work into the heaven of
the pursuit of the artistic goal. This oxymoron referred to the infernal and paradi-
siacal condition of art, exalting the extremely difficult process in which raw
material is transformed into artifact, giving back an important social value to
manual work.
of Alchemy.”
4Halleux, “Alchimie,” 336–7; Newman, “Technology and Alchemical Debate,” 432–3; Pereira,
“Use of Vernacular Languages,” 336; and Kahn, Alchimie et paracelsisme, 7–8.
5 Halleux, Savoir de la main, 134.
24 S. Neven
of base or impure matter (often metal or stone) into a noble or perfect one.6 To do
so, alchemists used to perform chemical processes and manipulations which resem-
bled those practiced by contemporary artists and artisans.
Thus, in both fields particular importance is placed on craft practices. Both
alchemical and artistic recipe books describe various processes for purifying and
transforming materials, either for improving their properties or in order to use them
for specific purposes. In this context, from a technological point of view, the term
‘transmutation’ could refer to the colouring of glass, the melting and tinting of
metals, the dyeing of stones or gems, or the manufacture of synthetic pigments. A
huge number of recipes are dedicated to procedures for obtaining gold or silver or
gold-silver like substances from base metals (copper, tin, lead, iron, mercury).
The tradition of recipe books has roots deep in Antiquity. Treatises dealing both
with art-technological and alchemical procedures notably survived in the Alexan-
drian Greek papyri preserved in Leyden and Stockholm.7 These date from the third
century but were probably based on previous texts.8 These papyri contain informa-
tion on the imitation of precious materials such as gold, gems and Tyrian purple.
They also have recipes dedicated to the art of dyeing, to chrysography, and to the
making of artificial precious stones.
An echo of these recipes can be found in the Codex Lucensis 490 (Lucca,
Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniàna), also known as the Compositiones ad tingenda
musiva or Compositiones variae. This manuscript, dated from the end of the eighth
or the very beginning of the ninth century, is based on previous Greek sources
compiled around the beginning of the seventh century.9 This recipe book deals with
various artistic techniques, notably the dyeing of skins, the manufacture of pig-
ments, colorants, varnishes and glues, chrysography and the gilding of metals.
The Lucca Manuscript shares content with the Mappae clavicula, compiled
around 800. Parts of this text have far earlier origins and present parallels not
only with the Leyden and Stockholm papyri but also with Syriac translation of
Zosimus and with ps.–Democritus’s writings.10 The nucleus of this text was
probably a Greek alchemical treatise written and translated between the fourth
and the fifth centuries, with additions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.11 The
two main manuscripts are the Corning, Corning Glass Museum, Ms. 5 and Sélestat,
Bibliothèque Humaniste, Ms. 17, but this tradition was also (partly) disseminated
through dozens of manuscripts. The Mappae clavicula contains about 300 recipes
own experiments (for example smelting rock crystal).29 This laboratory was lead by
Sisti, who also lead a glassmaking laboratory in Pisa, where he often had to go. In
his early career he used the technique a lume di lucerna, but once he transfered to
the Uffizi, this activity became secondary.30
At the Uffizi, glass production may well have been located in the smithy
workshop. It was probably limited to the glass technique a lume di lucerna. The
oven glass manufacturing method came from existing production centres such as
the ones in Pratolino, or Pisa, which became the most important in Tuscany. On the
other hand, during Ferdinando I’s reign, documents already show activities by
someone called Niccolò di Vincenzo Landi di Lucca, after Sisi, the principal
glassmaker in service to the Medici’s till 1620. The sources show that Landi, a
specialist in a lume di lucerne, went on duty in the fonderia of the Uffizi in 1591,
where he made little animals for the decoration of glass manufactured in Pisa.31 In
1601, Antonio Neri also mentioned him as the leader of the new glasswork in the
Casino di San Marco.32 Later, in 1618, when Grand Duke Cosimo II (1590–1621)
set up a large workshop with many ovens in the Boboli gardens near the Pitti palace,
28 ASF, GM 403, ins. 2, fol. 120.
29 On the story of the Medicean glassmaking, see Heikamp, “Mediceische Glaskunst.”
30 The technique a lume di lucerna allows to make or decorate little objects heating locally the
glass elements thanks to a lantern flame or a candle.
31 ASF, GM 112, passim; GM 217, fol. 23; and GM 195, ins. 1, fol. 102.
32 On the priest Antonio Neri and his treatise on the art of glassmaking, see Abbri’s introduction to
Neri, L’arte vetraria (2001), 5–23.
116 F. Kieffer
he entrusted its management to him, which shows that he was certainly able to
supervise large-scale production.
The fonderia produced mainly small ornamental glass items (Fig. 7). The items
in use for distillery and for the other workshops came either from Pisa, or from the
Casino di San Marco.33 Mainly made of bronze or metal, the models of these little
items were created by the court goldsmiths or by the smelters: there were little
masks, buttons to be filled with perfumes, ornamental glasses.34 The glasses, stored
in a hall of the Galleria “la stanza dei cristalli,” were distributed according to the
grand duke’s wishes and other workshops requirements (most of them were given
as presents or used to decorate other items coming from other workshops).35 Sisti,
in charge of the fonderia, was responsible for the seamless transitions between the
different stages of the process, which was not always an easy task in the case of a
delicate material such as crystal.36
The Forge
In the Uffizi, the forge and smelting works were far less visible and have less
prestige. Only small items are worked on in the forge: little masks for the orna-
Meissen Porcelain (ft48)
mid-eighteenth century
59.0 35.00 0.00 0.3 0.00 4.0 0.00 0.9 100
198 M. Wesley
Bibliography
Bacon, Francis. 1858. New Organon, trans. James Spedding et al. London: Longmans and Co.
Birch, Thomas. 1756–1757. History of the Royal Society of London. London: A. Millar.
Biringuccio, Vannoccio. [1540] 1942. The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biriniguccio: The Classic
Sixteenth-Century Treatise on Metals and Metallurgy, eds. and trans. Cyril Stanley Smith and
Marta Teach Gnudi. New York: Dover Publications.
Boardman, John. 1988. Trade in Greek Decorated Pottery. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 7: 27–
33.
Boyle, Robert. 1661. The Sceptical Chymist or Chymico-Physical Doubts and Paradoxes, Touch-
ing the Spagyrists Principles Commonly call’d Hypostatical: As They Are Wont To Be
Propos’d and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is Premis’d Part of
Another Discourse Relating To the Same Subject. London: J. Cadwell for Crooke.
Boyle, Robert. 1691. Will of the Hon. Robert Boyle, F.R.S, July 1691. The National Archives,
Manuscript PROB 11/408/169.
Carswell, John. 2000. Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain Around the World. London: British
Museum Press.
Chaffers, William. 1870. Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain, 3rd ed. London: J
Davy and Sons.
Charles the Second. 1672. Patent for the Protected Manufacture of Transparent Earthenware.
Public Record Office. C. 82 2425 Cal. S. P. Dom Entry Book 34.
Cruz, Gaspar da. 1569. Tractado em que se cotam muito por esteso as cousas da China. Madrid:
em casa de Andre de Burgos.
Debus, Allen G. 1967. Fire Analysis and the Elements in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Annals of
Science 23: 127–147.
d’Entrecolles, Père Francois Xavier. 1781. Lettre D’Entrecolles à Jao-tcheou, 1er Septembre
1712’ and ‘Lettre D’Entrecolles à Kim-te-tchim, le 25 Janvier 1722. In Lettres édifiantes et
curieuses écrites des missions estranges. Mémoires de la Chine etc., vol. 18–19. Paris: Societas
Jesu Missio Sinensis.
Foster, Joseph. 1891. Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714. London: Parker and Co.
Green, Chris. 1999. John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery: Excavations 1971–1979. London: English
Heritage.
disciplines may lead to association, contamination and confusion within this textual
genre. It finally suggests some clues to help locate, distinguish and demarcate
alchemical content within the literature of recipes.
Art and Alchemy Within Recipe Books
At first sight, any overlap between alchemy and art-technology within recipe books
can be broadly explained by the mutual use of various materials and substances
such as “common stones, gems, and types of marble, gold and other metals, sulfurs,
salts, and inks, azures, minium, and other colors, oils and burning pitches, and
countless other things.”2 More precisely, the field of art-technology encompasses a
large range of craft practices involved in the production of pieces of art (including
those which incorporate such substances). This ‘hand’ knowledge, is related to the
mechanical arts and is divorced from the philosophical or speculative dimension.
Yet, alchemy could be described as the practical, philosophical and medical search
for the perfecting of base material substances and also for the extending of life.3
The theoretical and practical aspects of alchemy involve both the study of all
inanimate or animate things made from the elements and the observation and
imitation of natural processes within the laboratory.4 In this context, alchemy
could be seen as a mechanical art, in the sense that it works on matter but is also
a liberal art, as it attempts to explain matter in its composition and its transforma-
tion.5 In the practical sense, one of the main goals of alchemy is the transmutation
1 The main data and characteristics of these manuscripts are given in Appendix.
2 Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon, 39–40.
3 Perception and definition of alchemy is not chronologically constant and has been the subject of
several (re)interpretations since the eighteenth century, see Principe & Newman, “Historiography
of Alchemy.”
4Halleux, “Alchimie,” 336–7; Newman, “Technology and Alchemical Debate,” 432–3; Pereira,
“Use of Vernacular Languages,” 336; and Kahn, Alchimie et paracelsisme, 7–8.
5 Halleux, Savoir de la main, 134.
24 S. Neven
of base or impure matter (often metal or stone) into a noble or perfect one.6 To do
so, alchemists used to perform chemical processes and manipulations which resem-
bled those practiced by contemporary artists and artisans.
Thus, in both fields particular importance is placed on craft practices. Both
alchemical and artistic recipe books describe various processes for purifying and
transforming materials, either for improving their properties or in order to use them
for specific purposes. In this context, from a technological point of view, the term
‘transmutation’ could refer to the colouring of glass, the melting and tinting of
metals, the dyeing of stones or gems, or the manufacture of synthetic pigments. A
huge number of recipes are dedicated to procedures for obtaining gold or silver or
gold-silver like substances from base metals (copper, tin, lead, iron, mercury).
The tradition of recipe books has roots deep in Antiquity. Treatises dealing both
with art-technological and alchemical procedures notably survived in the Alexan-
drian Greek papyri preserved in Leyden and Stockholm.7 These date from the third
century but were probably based on previous texts.8 These papyri contain informa-
tion on the imitation of precious materials such as gold, gems and Tyrian purple.
examples of Seidel, Freising and Schobinger discussed above illustrate. Even when
the writing of these instructions, verbalized in the rhetoric of the recipes, was
carried out by scribes, data were not blindly copied. Scribes organised, assembled,
completed or corrected when they felt it necessary. Thus, even if they were not the
author per se, in the sense that they were not the origin or the source of the technical
or chemical procedures they wrote down, they accomplished a set of activities
linked to ‘authorship’.50 Scribes also made attempts to ensure that the recipes could
be consulted at need: they composed tables of contents or indexes, they introduced
titles within the margins and many other details which attest to a real desire to
deliver usable information. In this context the marginal notes and additions made by
the scribes/authors of the recipe book are of interest as most of them are technical
comments testifying practical interest in both alchemical and artistic instructions.
Several marginal annotations due to Seidel’s hand punctuate the Cgm 4117 and
consist in personal commentaries regarding the technical procedures he records.
For example, on folio 53r, Seidel compares two ways for the melting of crystal.
Concerning the first process he states in the margin that this ‘art’ was not of use to
him as a better (method) is delivered on 219.51 Then on folio 219, he indicates
another method for the same technical procedure, giving as title “How one should
masterfully melt crystal.”52
In this sense, the scribes at the root of these recipe books created not simply a
copy but a unique work, which reflected their own interests, their cultural and life
context and sometimes their intention, which was to deliver practical and useful
instruction.
49 Halleux, Entre technologie et alchimie, 7.
50 For this definition of authorship, see notably Love, Attributing Authorship, 32–40.
51 “Dise kunst prauchet ich nit hinden amm 219 hastu vil pessere.” (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbi-
bliothek, Cgm 4117, fol. 53r)
52 “Wie man christallen maisterlich giessen soll.” (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm
4117, fol. 219)
36 S. Neven
Reliability of Recipe Books
The modalities of composition and diffusion of these recipe books have an impact
on their current (practical) use. During the compiling and disseminating processes,
both alchemical and art-technological collections of recipes were subject to muta-
tions, in the form of interpolation, reduction, contamination or assimilation with
other texts. As the recipe books evolved and were modified by adding new texts and
procedures, the recipes themselves could be modified in their technical formula-
tions during their transmission from one manuscript to another. Assimilation with
other texts occurs quite frequently, as the ingredients (and the actions) specified in
these texts appear in the artistic recipe books but also in medical treatises, cookery
books, and in alchemical or magical texts. Frequently, the copyist was free to add,
to remove or to omit some words or even some parts of the text. These modifica-
tions or omissions sometimes concern primary data, such as the name of the
ingredients or materials, or may be related to some of the steps of the procedure.
At each stage of the copying process, variations or errors can occur. This pheno-
extension of the economic demand for china and the intellectual drive toward
maker’s knowledge as expressed by Bacon.
Certainly, the history of ceramics after the seventeenth century is inextricably
linked to chemistry’s success at solving increasingly sophisticated questions of
luxury pottery production. We need look no further than William Cookworthy’s
(1705–1780) patent for the manufacture of porcelain in 1768 or the thousands of
experiments conducted by Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) in the production of his
Jasperwares. Unlike the other arts of the fire; metalworking, glassmaking, and
dyeing, the late inclusion of ceramics into the hierarchy of decorative arts allows
contemporary scholars opportunities to investigate the separations between the
craft artisan and the chymist during the early modern period, of which this discus-
sion of thermal analysis is only one of many.
Table 1 A comparison of modern elemental analyses of ‘Dwight’ experimental ware, Blanc-de-
Chine, ‘Böttger’ ware, and Kangxi porcelain
Material SiO2 Al2O3 Fe2O3 CaO MgO K2O Na2O Other Total
Dwight 80.3 12.4 0.74 0.39 0.2 5.35 0.47 Trace 99.1
Blanc-de-Chine (ft46) 76.7 16.8 0.35 0.15 0.08 5.9 0.2 Trace 100
Kangxi Porcelain (ft47) seven-
teenth century
64.7 28.35 0.95 0.5 0.1 2.8 2.4 0.19 99.99
Böttger Porcelain 1708 61.0 33.0 0.00 4.8 0.00 0.1 0.2 0.9 100
Meissen Porcelain (ft48)
mid-eighteenth century
59.0 35.00 0.00 0.3 0.00 4.0 0.00 0.9 100
198 M. Wesley
Bibliography
Bacon, Francis. 1858. New Organon, trans. James Spedding et al. London: Longmans and Co.
Birch, Thomas. 1756–1757. History of the Royal Society of London. London: A. Millar.
Biringuccio, Vannoccio. [1540] 1942. The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biriniguccio: The Classic
Sixteenth-Century Treatise on Metals and Metallurgy, eds. and trans. Cyril Stanley Smith and
Marta Teach Gnudi. New York: Dover Publications.
Boardman, John. 1988. Trade in Greek Decorated Pottery. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 7: 27–
33.
Boyle, Robert. 1661. The Sceptical Chymist or Chymico-Physical Doubts and Paradoxes, Touch-
ing the Spagyrists Principles Commonly call’d Hypostatical: As They Are Wont To Be
Propos’d and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is Premis’d Part of
Another Discourse Relating To the Same Subject. London: J. Cadwell for Crooke.
Boyle, Robert. 1691. Will of the Hon. Robert Boyle, F.R.S, July 1691. The National Archives,
Dwight’s re-firing of Chinese sherds while Tschirnhaus published results of the
experimental application of burning lenses to determine the physical properties of
varied ceramic bodies. Dwight was ultimately unsuccessful in his endeavors, likely
due to economic realities, while Tschirnhaus’s work would lay the cornerstones for
the eventual production of Meissen porcelain.
The Potter’s Art as Craft Practice
To understand why the shift from the intellectual space of the craft workshop to the
chymical laboratory was critical to the advancement of European ceramic devel-
opment, an examination of the awkward position of pottery within the hierarchy of
the decorative arts before the early modern period is worthwhile. Prior to its
interaction with chymistry, the relationship between the potter’s craft and fire was
principally of a mechanical, fixative nature. As the heat of the kiln was known to
remove the water from earthen bodies, its ability to affect permanent transformation
on the materials placed in the kiln was its principal contribution to the success of
ceramic production. Those objects existed first as trade goods rather than artisanal
objects and only later became valued as aesthetic products. Vannoccio
Biringuccio’s (1480–c.1539) introduction to his brief “discourse on the art of the
potter” from his Pirotechnia of 1540, encapsulates both the recent recognition
received by ceramic craft and its inseparability from fire:
Igne refutata: Thermal Analysis in the Laboratory Practices of John Dwight. . . 183
Having started to tell you of working potter’s clay for making crucibles and shells, the wish
came to me to tell you of the practice of this art also. Although it may seem at first glance to
be outside the order and purpose of my writing, he who considers well will see that it is not
unrelated to it but proper, since it is wholly dependent on the agency and power of fire if it is
to be brought to its perfection. Moreover, the potter’s glazes and colors are all substances of
various metals or impure minerals and therefore belong to fire. Since it is my intention to
treat of fire, minerals, and metals for you, I surely should not have omitted this, particularly
because it is a necessary art which enriches and is greatly praised both for its ingenuity and
its beauty.4
Like the other arts treated in the Pirotechnia, the action of the fire on base earths
and minerals provided integral transformation in the objects shaped by the potter’s
hands. At the time of Biringuccio’s writing, the potter’s art was on the threshold of a
paradigm shift that would create a marked division between craft knowledge and
theory based practice, setting two separate courses for ceramic innovation in the
later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His citation of alchemy as one of “two
sources as [pottery’s] principal basis,” is referential to the provision of purified
minerals and “elemental mixtures.”5 However, it also foreshadowed the intellectual
engagement of chymists in the quest for the production of European porcelain,
bringing the weight of the older alchemical tradition to bear.
Prior to the fourteenth century, European pottery was external to the hierarchy of
the esteemed arts, such as metallurgy, glassmaking, painting, and dyeing. The
extensively copied treatise De diversis artibus, composed in the thirteenth century
by the Benedictine monk Theophilus, thoroughly introduces the full range of
artisanal productions valued in Europe in its first book.6 Pottery is entirely absent
Pelli Bencivenni, Giuseppe. 1779. Saggio istorico della Real Galleria di Firenze, vol. 2. Florence:
Per Gaet. Cambiagi stamp. Granducale.
Perifano, Alfredo. 1997. L’Alchimie à la Cour de Côme Ier de Médicis: savoirs, culture et
politique. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Pieraccini, Gaetano. 1924–1925. La Stirpe de’Medici di Cafaggiolo: saggio di ricerche sulla
trasmissione ereditaria dei caratteri biologici, vol. 2. Florence: Vallecchi.
Pozzi, Mario. 2004. Filippo Pigafetta consigliere del principe. Vicenza: Biblioteca Civica
Bertoliana.
Schepelern, H.D. 1985. Natural Philosophers and Princely Collectors: Worm, Paludanus and the
Gottorp and Copenhagen Collections. In The Origins of Museums: The Cabinets of Curiosities
in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe, eds. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, 121–
127. Oxford: Clarendon.
Somers Cocks, Anna. 1980. Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500–1630.
London: Debrett’s Peerage.
Targioni Tozzetti, Giovanni. 1769–1779. Selve di notizie, spettanti all’origine de’ progressi e
miglioramenti delle scienze fisiche in Toscani, messe insieme dal Dottor Giovanni Targioni-
Tozzetti, per uso del dottor Ottaviano suo figlio, 17 vols. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di
Firenze, Targioni. Tozzetti, Ms. 189.
Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia, and Alessandro Tosi. 1990. “Flora e Pomona”: L’orticoltura nei
disegni e nelle incisioni dei secoli XVI–XIX. Florence: Olschki.
Wazbinsky, Zygmunt. 1994. Il Cardinale Francesco Maria Del Monte, 1549–1626, 2 vols.
Florence: Olschki.
Zobi, Antonio. 1841. Notizie storiche riguardanti l’Imperiale e Reale Stabilimento dei lavori di
commesso in pietre dure di Firenze. Florence: Tip. di Felice Le Monnier.
Zorzi, Elvira Garbero, and Mario Sperenzi. 2001. Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medic.
Florence: Olschki.
The Laboratories of Art and Alchemy at the Uffizi Gallery in Renaissance. . . 127
Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino
di San Marco (1574–1621)
Marco Beretta
Abstract Built in 1574 by court engineer and architect Bernardo Buontalenti for
Francesco I de Medici, the Casino di San Marco represents a unique example of a
late Renaissance site of alchemical research, art collecting and political court.
Francesco I’s program to enhance the chemical arts and make it into a body of
Here’s a list of artistic processes mentioned in Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the 18th Century. These reflect overlaps between alchemy and artisanal practice in workshops, recipe books, and princely laboratories:
📌 These processes show how art, craft, and alchemy were inseparable, all depending on material transformation through fire, grinding, mixing, and dyeing. Recipe books bundled together instructions for gilding, dyeing, pigment-making, imitation gems, ceramics, glass, and fireworks, blurring boundaries between artistic process and alchemical experiment.
Would you like me to organize this into a table (Process | Materials used | Alchemy connection | Artistic use)? That could mirror the material tables I made earlier.
give me some ideas for a game simulating the involvement of early modern alchemists in artisanal culture and materials science, including social activities like attaining patronage, work and commercial activity, counterfeiting and all the various trades that alchemical knowledge is relevant to. give me 40 elevator pitches in different genres
Here are 40 game elevator pitches, each imagining a different way to simulate the involvement of early modern alchemists in artisanal culture, material science, and the social worlds of patronage, trade, and counterfeiting. I’ve split them across genres so you get a variety of approaches:
⚗️ These 40 ideas try to capture the blend of artisanal craft, alchemical speculation, and social maneuvering that defined the early modern world. Some lean into economic simulation, others into narrative intrigue, roleplay, or action spectacle—but all circle around the tension between craft knowledge, secrecy, and patronage.
Want me to pick one genre (like sim/strategy or RPG) and sketch out a more detailed design document for one of these?
I was thinking a roguelike inspired by FTL, except instead of a ship you are building a lab, instead of a map of space you are looking at early modern europe, medieval islamicate civ, or the late antique roman empire. And instead of combat we have encounters representing the social and business life of the alchemist, starting with an apprenticeship, with potential legal consequences if the alchemist gets caught doing anything unethical. Give me 40 features for this vide game
Perfect — a roguelike lab-builder + social sim in the mold of FTL, but steeped in early modern alchemy and artisanal culture. Here’s a list of 40 features that could give your game depth, variety, and replay value:
⚗️ This structure makes the game a social & material roguelike, where instead of fighting pirates you’re dodging inquisitors, rival guilds, and scheming patrons — and instead of upgrading weapons you’re expanding furnaces, alembics, and recipe books.
Would you like me to mock up a sample “FTL-style encounter” (with choices and consequences) so you can see how a single event would play out in this framework?
give me 40 thoughts on how we could design the lab building section with attention to narrative design considerations, visual legibility of the interface, and applying other relevant game design disciplines (name and explain what you're applying as you go)
Great — let’s zoom in on the lab-building section of your roguelike, and think about it systematically. I’ll give you 40 thoughts, weaving in narrative design, visual design & legibility, and game design disciplines like systems design, UX, player psychology, cognitive load management, etc. I’ll name the discipline as I apply it and explain why it matters.
⚗️ Together, these 40 design considerations keep the lab visually clear, narratively rich, mechanically tense, and emotionally engaging, applying principles from narrative design, UI/UX, systems design, psychology, and world-building.
Would you like me to mock up a sample lab UI layout (like an ASCII/Tiles sketch inspired by FTL) so you can visualize how modules and apprentices move around?
how can we start simple so as not to overwhelm the beginning player, but have things like tech trees or other level ups and upgradables gradually reveal themselves, and give players reasons to take an interest in these further resources?
That’s a key question — roguelikes live or die by how they onboard players without overwhelming them, while still offering depth and discovery over repeated runs. Here’s a breakdown of how you could structure this for your alchemy-lab roguelike, with some principles from game design, UX, and narrative design folded in:
✨ In short:
1. Limit variables early (one room, one resource, a couple recipes).
2. Reveal systems gradually with clear narrative reasons.
3. Make deeper systems desirable (prestige, patronage, more powerful outputs).
4. Use runs to drip-feed complexity, keeping early plays approachable but later plays rich.
Do you want me to sketch a sample “progression curve” for 10 runs (what systems and modules unlock when, what story beats nudge them) so you can see how the complexity layers build?
Going back to our lists of materials and processes I want you to think about the economics of early modern europe, how profitable these various lines of work might be for our alchemists, and how we can design interesting choices into the game for navigating these artisanal worlds
Got it ⚗️ — let’s connect the materials and processes we listed earlier with the economics of early modern Europe, and then map that onto interesting player choices for your roguelike. This means looking at:
1. Relative profitability – some trades are stable, some speculative, some fraudulent.
2. Social/legal risk – some were protected guild monopolies, others shady/illegal.
3. Game design levers – scarcity, reputation, patronage, and risk vs. reward.
⚗️ In game terms, the economy becomes a web of risks, profits, and reputations. The player’s story emerges from which trades they pursue: the cautious pigment merchant, the daring counterfeiter, the noble glassmaker, the doomed porcelain dreamer.
Would you like me to draft an “economy table” (rows = materials/processes, columns = profitability, risk, prestige value, narrative hooks), so you have a design reference you can plug directly into your game system?
give me designs for encounter templates that cover scenes in the social life of an alchemist including court patronage mapped out across europe, all the merchants and tradesmen he employs building the lab, and artists or rulers who benefit from his chemical productions
Perfect — this is where your roguelike can really sing: not just the lab sim, but the social encounters that give every run narrative tension. Think of these as encounter templates (like FTL events) with multiple-choice outcomes, mixing history, economics, and roleplay. I’ll group them into three clusters: Court Patronage, Merchants & Tradesmen, and Artists & Rulers.
1. The Duke’s Banquet (Florence)
7. The Coal Merchant
16. The Painter’s Commission
Would you like me to map out 1–2 full encounter templates in detail (with choice branches, mechanical effects, and narrative text) so you can see exactly how they’d play out in your roguelike?
create a list of encounters for an apprentice to go through, leading up to an important trip to a nearby city
Here’s a progression of apprentice encounters, designed to feel like a first act of your roguelike run. They teach basic systems (lab work, social navigation, economy) while building anticipation for a journey to a nearby city (maybe Florence, Venice, or Prague depending on setting). Each one has narrative flavor, choice structure, and light consequences.
⚖️ Design Notes:
Would you like me to expand one of these into a full FTL-style encounter script (with text, choices, and outcomes) so you can see exactly how it plays at the player’s level?