Visita Interiora: Book of abstracts
Session 1. Allegorical Motifs in Alchemical Iconography
Matteo Martelli (University of Bologna)
The Early Modern Reception of Byzantine Ouroboros Iconography
Despite the limited Fortleben of Byzantine alchemy in early modern Europe, certain Byzantine alchemical images appear to have entered the iconographic tradition of early modern alchemy. This paper examines a particular case study from the rich Caprara collection at the University of Bologna Library. The collection includes an early modern alchemical manuscript that brings together various treatises accompanied by illustrations. Among them are two depictions of the ouroboros that can be traced back to the Byzantine tradition.
Bio: Matteo Martelli is a professor in History of Science and Principal Investigator of the ERC Project AlchemEast: Alchemy in the Making: From ancient Babylonia via Graeco-Roman Egypt into the Byzantine, Syriac and Arabic traditions (1500 BCE -1000 AD).
Jose Gabriel Alegria (Stony Brook University / Bibliotheca Hertziana)
A Triple Rebis: The Three Faces of the Trinity as a Late Alchemical Motif (16th-18th Centuries)
This paper wants to open the discussion on a particular iconographic motif that appeared in alchemy: that of the three merged faces that share four eyes and three mouths. This motif, unique in its origin to the gallic deity which Caesar called Lugus, would be appropriated to represent the Christian Trinity from the 14th century onwards, and be subsequently censored and forbidden by the Catholic Church several times. These faces would appear in alchemy by the 1500s, probably in an attempt to sacralize the practice with the incremental use of Christian symbols, that followed the initiative of Arnaldus de Villa Nova and Ulmann’s Buch der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit, implementing, however, an iconography that would later become heterodox. These shared symbols have been highlighted by scholars sometimes to imply that the three faced Trinity itself had an engrained alchemical meaning in itself (Montoya Beleña, 1997, p.202.) however, the first appearance of the combination of both the three-faced God and the diagram called the “shield of the Trinity” or scutum fidei can first be attested in early Spanish printed sources, in Andrés de Eli’s Thesoro de la Passion, from 1494. Before this example, the triple face and the shield appear separately. The implementation of the triple shield in an alchemical context can be found in the Sylva Philosophorum of 1550 as a development of the principle depicted in the Ripley Scroll (1570): the three spheres representing the three alchemical stages, and their inherent unity. And thus, the use of further trinitarian iconography, however odd, came as a logical rhetorical development in this discourse. Later, in the 18th century manuscripts of the Clavis Artis, we see the emergence of a three faced anguipede, that can be interpreted as an attempt to unify the duality between the sun and the moon that it holds. This extravagant figure, that can be interpreted as a triple Rebis, could have had its origin in a 12th century decorative motif in the cathedral of Basel (Kirfel, 1948), and as such can be interpreted as a late yet remarkable iconographic development in alchemy, instead of holding an inherent meaning.
Left: Turba Philosophorum, BNF, Ms Latin 7171, fol.4r.
Right: Thesoro de la Passion, Andrés de Eli, 1494, fol.5v.
Left: Clavis Artis, Anonymous German artist, 1738, Biblioteca dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Licei, Roma, vol. 3, p. 184.
Right: Detail of the choir of Basel Cathedral, reproduced in Kirfel, 1948.
Bio: Jose Gabriel Alegria is an artist and art historian born in Berlin and raised in Peru, where he did his master in Art History at PUCP. He is currently completing his PhD project with Stony Brook University as a fellow of the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, which explores the spread and prohibition of the iconography or the three-faced Trinity in the Renaissance. His artistic work closely dialogues with his research and has been published thorugh Anathema Publishing (Canada) and Scarlet Imprint (UK).
Tom Fischer (École Pratique des Hautes Études-LEM)
If Stones Could Speak: Alchemical Thought and Religious Sculptures in Pre-Revolutionary France
The manuscript Innes 09 entered the collections of the Warburg Institute (London) in 2012. Dating from the second half of the 18th century, it successively belonged to the famous libraries of the occultist Stanislas de Guaita (1861-1897) and the bibliophile Michael Innes (1897-1980). Entitled Traité de la Source inépuisable de la Lumière Suprême (Treatise on the Inexhaustible Source of Supreme Light), it consists of unpublished “hermetic” and “magical” treatises that can be attributed, with some probability, to a mysterious author named Philovite. However, some of the notes at the beginning and end of the document appear to be by a slightly later hand. The last pages of the manuscript are particularly covered with pen and ink drawings by this second scribe. They represent iconographic elements (statues or bas-reliefs), copied from the portals of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. These notes and drawings are signed with the name of a French artist whose alchemical preoccupations were hitherto completely unknown: Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1763- 1810). The presence of such illustrations in this type of manuscript can be explained by the existence of specific alchemical exegeses, especially present in France since the second half of the sixteenth century: the alchemical interpretations of medieval religious architecture and iconography. Our aim will therefore be to contextualise and analyse the presence of these elements in the alchemical imagination and practice of the time, and to recall their forgotten importance in the European culture of the modern and contemporary eras.
Bio: Tom Fischer (EPHE / LEM (Paris) – CÉRÉdI (Rouen) is a PhD student under the supervision of Professor Jean-Pierre Brach.
Session 2. Alchemy in Manuscript Illumination
Ellen Hausner (University of Oxford, Wolfson College)
Between Word and Image: Alchemical Characters in Early Modern Visual Culture
From the late medieval era through the end of the early modern period, writers of alchemical literature used both verbal and pictorial methods of communication. Alongside these two systems, a third, visually abstract language began to be used to transmit meaning. Known in the period as ‘characters,’ these symbolic notations and signs were pervasive across alchemical literature and became a vital form of expression in alchemical texts.
This paper will explore the ways in which alchemical characters may have been perceived in the period through an examination of their association with other material found within manuscript sources. A key source for gaining insight into alchemical characters is Simon Forman (1552 – 1611), the astrologer, physician, and alchemist. He was one of many alchemists in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries fascinated by these characters, creating several lists of them along with their interpretations. It is apparent from the evidence that Forman did not regard alchemical characters solely as a neutral notation system for representing alchemical substances, processes, and apparatus. Rather, he saw them as containing some of the properties attributed to magical, astrological, and angelic characters. In several other manuscripts now housed in Glasgow, Leiden, and Amsterdam, there is a clear relationship between alchemical characters and magical sigils, occult and ‘exotic’ alphabets, cryptographic systems, and astrological glyphs. All of these systems are part of a subset of early modern and Renaissance visual culture which emphasised mathematics, magic, and ancient knowledge as expressed through written notations and languages.
Bio: Ellen Hausner is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral research explores the function and significance of characters within alchemical manuscripts in the early modern period. She gained her Master’s degree in History from the University of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education.
Sergei Zotov (The Warburg Institute, University of London)
When Silence Speaks: (How) Can We Study Alchemical Image Series Without Texts?
Alchemical manuscripts form the foundation of Western alchemical iconography, persisting well into the print era despite the rise of printing press. While many illustrated manuscripts are accompanied by explanatory texts, we also encounter cases where such texts are missing — either because they were never composed, never copied, or were lost over time. In some instances, these textless series are variants of known cycles such as the Coronatio series or Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit, allowing us to "read" the images through familiar interpretative frameworks.
However, more challenging are those unique, self-contained image cycles that lack any textual explanation and resist easy identification. How should we approach these "silent" image series? Can we still reconstruct their meaning or function? This paper explores one such example, the enigmatic Hebdomas Hebdomadarum, an eighteenth-century alchemical treatise structured as a visual "week of weeks" — forty-nine emblematic plates embedded with alchemical, planetary and scriptural symbolism but devoid of narrative commentary. In examining all existing copies of this work, I argue that these image series may have been deliberately designed to invite open-ended interpretation or even to be the text themselves.
Drawing on iconographic parallels, manuscript context, and comparative traditions—including Arabic image-based texts—I suggest that we can still develop interpretative strategies even when a "key" is absent. At the same time, we must be prepared to confront the possibility that such images, while visually compelling, may not encode a stable or decipherable message at all. Their very ambiguity may have been part of their alchemical function.
Bio: Sergei Zotov is a historian of science in medieval and early modern Europe, specializing in the iconography of alchemy and magic. He holds a DPhil in Renaissance Studies from the University of Warwick and has previously worked on alchemy projects at the research library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. After receiving his doctorate, Sergei is a Frances Yates Long-Term Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London. His current research focuses on the iconography of alchemical manuscripts produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Session 3. Text-Image Relationships in Alchemy
Witalij Morosow (University of Bochum)
The Principle of Coincidentia Oppositorum and the Metaphysics of Light in Alchemical Imagery of the Early Modern Period
One of the most famous dialectical principles in the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa is the coincidentia oppositorum (the coincidence of opposites). This principle was first articulated by the German philosopher in his treatise De docta ignorantia, where he employed various geometric figures characteristic of his theologia geometrica to illustrate it. Later, the idea of visualizing the coincidentia oppositorum was further developed in Cusanus’ metaphysics of light. In De coniecturis, Nicholas of Cusa introduced the so-called figura paradigmatica (or figura p) to elucidate key aspects of his philosophical system. This figure is an optical construct represented by a diagram consisting of two interpenetrating triangles: the pyramis lucis (pyramid of light), signifying unitas (unity), and the pyramis tenebrae (pyramid of darkness), signifying alteritas (otherness or multiplicity). These triangles intersect in such a way that the apex of one touches the base of the other. By employing this image, Cusanus sought to demonstrate how dialectical structures are mirrored in nature. He used this figure, for instance, to describe the plant kingdom and to conceptualize the dialectic of gender in the earthly realm — finding the feminine in the masculine (feminitas in masculinitate) and the masculine in the feminine (masculinitas in feminitate), thereby revealing the fundamental mutability of nature. Subsequently, the figura paradigmatica was taken up by several alchemists of the Early Modern Period and played a significant role in shaping the alchemical metaphysics of light. This paper aims to demonstrate how the principle of coincidentia oppositorum was expressed in alchemical imagery and to what extent one can speak of an alchemical reception of the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa.
Bio: Witalij Morosow (Dr. phil.) is a historian of ideas specialising in the intellectual and spiritual traditions of medieval and early modern Europe and Russia, with a particular focus on alchemy, Paracelsianism, and the philosophy of science. He is currently a Fellow at the University of Bochum and a guest researcher at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg.
Amber Rozenrichter (University of Amsterdam)
Within Her Womb, a Tree Grows: Feminine and Arboreal Allegory in the Alchemical Birth of the Philosopher’s Stone
This paper examines the alchemical allegories embedded in the emblems of Michael Maier’s mytho-alchemical book Atalanta Fugiens. It focuses on allegories centered around gender and the natural world, with particular attention to the arboreal symbolism that recurs throughout the manuscript. Women and androgynous figures play a significant role in the alchemical process and are depicted in profound mythological terms in Atalanta Fugiens. Through evocative metaphors, Maier reveals what he considers to be ‘the secrets of nature.’ One such secret — the allegory of the alchemical womb — serves as a generative space from which the birth of the Philosopher’s Stone can emerge. In mytho-alchemical terms this role is fulfilled by Adonis, who resembles the perfect androgynous being. This paper explores how this symbolic birth is closely intertwined with feminine personifications and arboreal motifs in Maier’s work. The goddess Diana is explored as a midwife, from both a mythological and an alchemical perspective. This leads to the concept of the Tree of Diana, which underscores her fundamental role in the alchemical birth. This paper argues that such feminine and arboreal allegories are not incidental, but central to understanding the physical and metaphysical dimensions of alchemical transformation in the Renaissance imagination.
Bio: Amber Rozenrichter is a Research Master’s student in Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her primary research centers on Renaissance alchemy, with a particular emphasis on the symbolic roles of trees, the natural world, and feminine personifications within alchemical processes. Her work explores how mythological narratives shape and inform esoteric thought.
Laurence Chen (University College London)
Pseudepigraphic Narratives: Allegory and Alchemical Myths in the Ashmole Collection
This paper argues that pseudepigraphic and biographical accounts of alchemists were important to alchemical culture for their allegorical potential. Previous scholars have established that there was a discursive impetus to pseudepigraphy, such as in Lawrence Principe’s work on Basil Valentine and Michela Pereira on pseudo-Lull. This paper will argue that as well as elevating the intellectual authority of alchemical texts and writers, there was a self-allegorizing to identifying the self with sages from alchemy’s mythic and imagined past, that functioned under an essentially alchemical logic.
Therefore, this paper will explore the allegorical potential of biographical and pseudepigraphic accounts of alchemists in manuscripts such as Ashmole 1485 and Ashmole 1408, that were connected to the astrologer Richard Napier. Not only do they record a specific moment in English-alchemical history, but they are evidence of Ashmole’s post-Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum engagement with alchemy and astrology. I will argue that stories of alchemists both real and imagined, such as George Ripley and Salomon Trismosin, tell us about the mythmaking impulses of alchemical discourse and allegory. By juxtaposing stories of alchemical lives to Ashmole’s monumental printed anthology, I will ask what is both preserved and lost between manuscript and printed allegories.
I will end by suggesting that pseudepigraphy forms an essentially literary figure, comparing it to the rhetorical device prosopopoeia. In allegorizing alchemical stories, this paper will show what it meant for an alchemical reader to engage with the past in a correspondent cosmos.
Bio: Laurence Chen is a PhD student at the UCL, London, working on thefigural potential of alchemical allusions in English lyric poems. Supervisors: Dr Anthony Ossa-Richardson and Dr Eric Langley.
Session 4. Visual Reception of Alchemy
Vanessa A. Portugal (Trinity College Dublin)
Mystical marriage between Nature and Grace. A Discussion on Spiritual Alchemy in an Early Modern Religious Print. Topics. Sources of Influence. Methods of Analysis
This paper will examine the alchemical allegories in the understudied seventeenth–century Roman engraving titled Simbolica Descriptio, which showcases Biblical passages and emblems of Christ and the Virgin Mary, dealing with topics of origin and transformation.
This presentation will focus on the parallelism between the ‘mystical marriage’ and the ‘alchemical wedding’ to firstly, examine the process whereby alchemical allegories were employed to convey theological explanations; and secondly, to discuss the agency of alchemical images in catholic practices during the early modern world.
Simbolica Descriptio is part of an eighteenth century compilation of European engravings in a Jesuit College of Arts in New Spain (Colonial Mexico). Made in Rome by Giacomo Lauro for the Polish patron Alexandro de Rytwiani Zborowski, the engraving constitutes a medium for an understanding of life through the lens of a spiritual alchemy as well as for the transatlantic dissemination of alchemy.
Bio: Vanessa A. Portugal is an assistant Professor of Global Art History at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her research focuses on art theory, and on the agency of astrological images in the early modern world, especially in colonial Latin America. Amongst her publications is Imagenes astrológicas en la Nueva España (UCO-Press 2018).
Emmanouela Kyriakopoulou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
Compassion or Condemnation? Reinterpreting Disease and Healing Through Folk and Alchemical Traditions
In an etching from 1608, a group is depicted marching down the street of a Dutch village. The peculiar entourage, with figures wearing worn capes and hats adorned with feathers and foliage, has stood in front of the door of a house, collecting alms from the owners. This work by Claes Jansz. Visscher (II) (1587 - 1652) bears the title Procession of Feasting Lepers and depicts a scene that probably occurs at the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas when Dutch towns allowed leprosarium inmates to enter the urban space and collect donations. The lepers’ human nature seems threatened by a disease that, according to 17th-century views, degenerated the patients by tearing down the boundaries that distinguished them from animals. At the same time, however, elements within the composition seem to associate the feasting lepers with the concepts of regeneration, healing, and the victory of life over death. These iconographic elements point to two fields: folk rituals that marked the end of winter and occult works such as those of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535). Within this framework, symbols referring to alchemical concepts are identified, such as the divine order underlying the visible world, the “as above, so below”, as well as the transformation as a process of purification. By exploring these features, the proposed paper will aim to answer the question: How had Visscher chosen to depict the diseased? As a group that deserves to suffer, since their condition is the result of their sinful behavior? Or as people worthy of the compassion and support of their fellow citizens, and ultimately of healing?
Bio: Emmanouela Kyriakopoulou is a PhD candidate in Art History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The subject of her PhD is the depiction of catastrophic events in Dutch prints of the 17th and 18th centuries. She has conducted seminar courses for undergraduate students in Art History as a teaching assistant at the University of Athens. She is an educator in programs that aim at the public aspects of art. For the academic year 2024-25, she is continuing her PhD research in Rome, at Sapienza Università di Roma.
Laura-Elena Oancea (University of Bucharest)
Alchemical Allegories in the Sola-Busca Tarot: Stages and Symbols of the Magnum Opus
The Sola-Busca Tarot (1491), considered the first fully illustrated deck of both major and minor arcana, presents a complex iconography that remains underexplored in relation to alchemical thought. This presentation proposes an analysis of selected figures and scenes from the deck through the lens of operative laboratory alchemy.
I identify recurring visual motifs—large distillation vessels, stirring rods, burning structures, and figurative sequences that echo technical stages of the Magnum Opus (sublimation, calcination, cohobation). These elements are examined in comparison with the iconography of alchemical manuscripts circulating in Italy before 1491, including works attributed to Pseudo-Geber, George Ripley, and anonymous Latin treatises widely accessible to the educated elite.
The methodology draws on interpretive iconographic analysis in the extended Panofskian sense, decoding the relationship between visual forms, cultural references, and the transformative function of the image. The analysis connects individual cards — such as the Nine of Disks, which recalls specific iconographic motifs in Aurora Consurgens, such as depictions of violent transformation through ritualistic fires — and alchemical stages (e.g., nigredo, rubedo).
Although no explicit textual evidence confirms an alchemical intent on the part of the deck’s creators, it remains highly plausible that the Sola-Busca was produced within a cultural milieu — late 15th-century northern Italy — where humanism, Neoplatonism, esoteric interests, and alchemical currents, were actively circulating among courtly elites, including at the Estense Court, with which the Sola-Busca deck has been associated. Patrons and viewers belonging to such circles would likely have been exposed to both textual and visual alchemical traditions, whether through manuscript culture or oral transmission (Adams 2017). Moreover, the deck’s later reception—particularly its influence on the Rider-Waite Tarot and its explicitly alchemical interpretation by Peter Mark Adams — testifies to its semantic openness and capacity to resonate with alchemical frameworks across time. My contribution, however, addresses the reception and reconfiguration of alchemical images in a non-explicitly alchemical context.
Bio: Laura-Elena Oancea is a PhD student at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters, within the Doctoral School Space, Image, Text, Territory – CESI. Her research explores the intersection of esotericism, literature, and narrative structures, with a particular focus on Tarot as a cybertextual storytelling system.