A very influential early series of emblematic woodcut illustrations is the Rosarium Philosophorum of 1550.
Many of these woodcuts were created by copying drawings from earlier manuscripts, for example the Reusner Pandora of 1582 which printed woodcuts of the drawings in the Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit manuscript made 170 years earlier. There were few early books on alchemy and one of the earliest printed books relevant to alchemy to contain woodcut illustrations was Hieronymous Braunschweig's Liber de arte distillandi (the book of distilling), 1500. The woodblocks could be made the same height as the metal type and thus printed together on the page. Many early printed books were illustrated with woodcuts. To appreciate alchemical emblems one has to appreciate all these types of illustration. Some being almost scribbles or rough sketches, while others have work of exquisite quality. The important thing to bear in mind is that the images in alchemical manuscripts vary in quality of execution. A person interested in alchemy was not necessarily a good artist! Some of the manuscripts were undoubtedly made for patrons and were of the finest quality, such as those in the Splendor Solis made by a leading artist of the early 16th century. Most of the illustrations in manuscripts are simple line drawings, some very coarsely executed. Here we look at the different types or styles of illustrations in alchemical manuscripts. Within a few decades extremely sophisticated alchemical imagery appears. This is possibly the earliest example of alchemical imagery. The earliest manuscript of this which has survived is dated to 1361 but it does not contain any actual drawings, but the second oldest copy, which is now in Vienna has pictures of these images. The text includes descriptions of imagery. This appears to have been written in Northern Italy around the later part of the 13th century. Among the earliest alchemical manuscripts bearing images is a work ascribed to Constantine of Pisa, his 'book of the secrets of alchemy'. Alchemical manuscripts began to be written from about the 13th century, but these were primarily works of scholasticism and philosophy and did not use illustrations. The first alchemical emblematic illustrations appear around 1400. Though copperplate engraving was invented in the 15th century it did not become widely used for printing illustrations in books until the late 16th century, so the earliest period of alchemical emblematic images in books were in the form of woodcuts. The earliest printed illustrations in books were woodcuts. There were almost no early alchemical books and these only began to appear in the 16th century. Printing really got going during the 16th century.
Printed books first appeared from 1456, but only a small number of titles appeared during the incunable period, that is the infancy of printed books up till 1500. The first alchemical emblematic images appeared in manuscripts from about 1400. Overview Floor - Manuscripts, woodcuts and engravings RoomĮarly Period Floor Early Europe Floor Seventeenth Century Floor Eighteenth Century Floor Floorplan Back to alchemy website Virtual Art Gallery of Alchemical Emblems
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