Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Carrasco, Malena

Keywords

Alchemy, Christian Imagery, Gender, Reproduction, Campin, Robert

Area of Concentration

Art History

Abstract

In seventeenth-century Europe, the practice of alchemy was commonplace among scholars, noblemen, and the clergy alike. A number of Dutch artists took interest in the subject and produced a variety of alchemical “genre” scenes, which depict the alchemist in his home laboratory, accompanied occasionally by his wife, children, and assistants. Dutch alchemical genre scenes serve a unique purpose in the study of art, as they showcase a versatile, complex space that gives us a look into Early Modern concepts of gender, domesticity, science, and religion. As well, like many other Dutch domestic scenes, the alchemist’s laboratory became a space for moralization and reflecting Christian values. The alchemist’s wife is a pivotal figure in these scenes – the household is her domain, and she encapsulates ideas of femininity, proper domesticity, and motherhood, while channeling the image of the paragon of dutiful housewives and mothers, the Virgin Mary. I will begin with a discussion of the presentation of sacred domestic space in art, starting in the fifteenth century with Robert Campin’s “Mérode Triptych,” which shows the domestic space populated by the Virgin and Joseph, a space of theological symbolism intended to evoke spiritual devotion, and transitioning into Protestant moralization scenes where, regardless of outward subject matter, God is omnipresent. The next chapter will examine the relationship of alchemy and gender in greater detail, including issues of sex and sexuality in alchemical imagery, practical aspects of women’s association with alchemy, and the connection between the female alchemist and the witch. Finally, I will turn to a discussion of the nature of alchemical creation and reproduction, as both a feminine and godlike pursuit; the alchemist, like the artist, must navigate the narrow boundary that separates righteousness in his work from vanity and blasphemy in imitating God. Alchemy, and its depiction in art, exists in a penumbral space between the religious and the secular, the male and the female, the moral and the immoral, and it is the figure of the alchemist’s wife in these paintings that most efficiently allows us a glimpse into this intersection of spaces.

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