Early Modern Alchemy: Heinrich Khunrath's "Amphitheater of Eternal Knowledge"

"While these Discontents continued, severall Letters past between Queene Elizabeth and Doctor Dee, whereby perhaps he might promise to returne; At length it so fell out, that he left Trebona and took his Iourney for England. The ninth of Aprill he came to Breame… Here that famous Hermetique Philosopher, Dr Henricus Khunrath of Hamburgh came to visit him." - Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum, (London, 1652), cited in Frances Yates' The Rosicrucian Enlightenment

I'M a bit obsessed with the Elizabethan occult author John Dee (even wrote a good chunk of his Wikipedia page), but I know very little about the man who the famed historian Frances Yates considered to be the critical link between Dee and the Continental tradition of European alchemy, Heinrich Khunrath. Last year I came across some of the book plates from Khunrath's occult work Ampitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (Hamburg, 1595), or "The Amphitheater of Eternal Knowledge," and was floored by their complexity and beauty. Remarkably, only three copies of the first edition of this work are known to exist. The University of Wisconsin Library has been good enough to scan the images of its copy and make them available online along with an excellent critical history of the book (here). The same site also offers a good overview of the little that is known about Khunrath's biography.

"The Cosmic Rose"

"The Hermaphrodite."

"The Alchemist's Laboratory." Each object bears a Latin motto offering advice
for the alchemical adept. For instance, the still reads FESTINA LENTE 
("hasten slowly"), the personal motto of Emperor Augustus.

"The Four, the Three, the Two, the One."

Remarkably these already exceptionally detailed images originally appeared surrounded by cryptic Latin text. Take "The Hermaphrodite" image displayed above, for example:

Click image for a much larger version. Transcription of the text here.

A detail from the same image:

Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica
(London, 1564), frotispiece.

Here we get a sense of the bafflingly complex nature of these images. The figure of the hermaphrodite as a metaphor for the dualistic nature of the universe and the human body is a common one in alchemical imagery. Likewise, the sun and moon are frequently used to symbolize the male and female natures inherent in different elements (the sun is gold/male, the moon female/silver, etc.) The black peacock labelled "AZOTH" leads us deeper into Hermetic territory. Azoth was the hypothesized universal solvent, the "ultimate substance" which could transform all elements. Here it seems to be used to convey the union of male and female (and of all elements) which would allow the corporeal human form to transcend to a divine plane (note the symbol of the trinity above the peacock feathers, which resemble diagrams of the celestial spheres). To top it all off, the "O" in "Azoth" made out of John Dee's "hieroglyphic monad"!

So what are we to make of all this? Quite a few scholars have examined Khunrath's Ampitheatre. In her book The Alchemy of Light, Urszula Szulakowska, for instance, argues that the engravings in Khunrath's texts

are intended to excite the imagination of the viewer so that a mystic alchemy can take place through the act of visual contemplation… Khunrath's theatre of images, like a mirror, catoptrically reflects the celestial spheres to the human mind, awakening the empathetic faculty of the human spirit which unites, through the imagination, with the heavenly realms. Thus, the visual imagery of Khunrath's treatises has become the alchemical quintessence, the spiritualized matter of the philosopher's stone (9).

A 17th century portrait engraving of
Khunrath.

The images, in other words, invite the viewer to engage in a meditation on the nature of the universe and on the links between the earthly and the divine, the corporeal and the spiritual. Of course, such a statement would be equally true of many other instances of early modern alchemical and Hermetic symbolism. I suspect that a lot of the meaning in these images and the text that accompanies them has actually been lost, due to the fact that alchemical practice depended upon face-to-face interactions (like the one between John Dee and Khunrath) which were never recorded. And this was precisely what was intended - the true secrets of early modern alchemy were intended for a small number of the "elect" and were elaborately concealed in complex and often inscrutable language when they were allowed into printed works.

On the other hand, the visual interest of these magnificent images is arguably all the greater owing to the unknowable mysteries that now surround their creation and meaning.

A Renaissance Merchant's Life in Clothing

I've just finished reading Ulinka Rublack's Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford, 2010) and came away from it with a newfound appreciation for how truly odd early modern clothing was -- and how important these clothes were in people's daily lives. Rublack, a Cambridge history professor, is very shrewd in noting that obsolete sartorial choices like codpieces, corsets or tight-fitting doublets were about more than adornment: they helped to structure the limits of physical movement while also expressing personal allegiances, social groupings, nationalities, and religious faith. What is more, early modern clothing offered a window into the inner emotional states of the wearer in a world that was far less receptive to emotional introspection than our own.

Matthäus Schwarz depicted by Christoph Amberger in 1542.

This, his wedding portrait, also includes his horoscope, 

visible above the wine glass.

To me, by far the most striking piece of evidence Rublack analyzes in her book is a vellum manuscript of some one hundred and sixty five watercolor illustrations from sixteenth-century Germany. Each one depicts the same man: Matthäus Schwarz of Augsburg (1497-1574), a successful merchant who worked as an accountant for the powerful Fugger banking house. What makes this book extraordinary is that it depicts Schwarz and his clothing in every stage of his life, from what he called his “first dress in the world” as a days-old infant to the somber robes he donned as an ailing man of sixty-seven. Schwarz began to commission the illustrations from local Augsburg painters starting when he was twenty-seven, and in its pages we see a man's life as if in a film: the small child in its early pages grows to become a proud 15-year-old riding a horse, then a young man wearing elaborate Italian suits of red silk. When Augsburg is threatened by attack, an older Schwarz is depicted in a suit of gilded armor protecting his city. When his employer Anton Fugger is married we see Schwarz as a handsome man of thirty attending the wedding in rich velvet with a dueling sword at his side; when Fugger dies, Schwarz is a sixty-three wearing black robes and a wintry white beard.

Schwarz even had himself depicted naked (front and back!) for reasons that scholars are still debating. Simply put, this is one of the most extraordinary early modern historical sources that I've ever seen. Rublack's publishers do a good job of including numerous color illustrations from what Schwarz called his Klaidungsbüchlein, or “Book of Clothes,” but a printed book can't possibly include all of them.

Below I've selected some more that stood out to me.

The opening pages of Schwarz's Klaidungsbüchlein, showing him as a twenty-three-year old.

Schwarz as a new-born infant. Note the five-pointed star on his cradle! Perhaps a charm against evil?

At five years and four months old, a pious child.

Riding in the back of a wagon with his parents at eight and a half years old.

Hawking in the countryside with a friend, nine years and four months old.

Schwarz trampling on his schoolbooks as a fourteen-year-old.

Proudly riding his horse at fifteen.

Hawking at nineteen and seven months in a fashionable suit with codpiece, sword at side.

A month later, working as a clerk to Jakob Fugger, one of the richest men of his era, and perhaps of any era.

Practicing at sword fighting, twenty-one and two thirds. Some bold color choices in this suit!

At an archery contest at twenty-two years of age, wearing a similar suit and a foppish ruffled hat.

A fop no more: Matthäus mourns the death of his father. All four figures in this picture depict Schwarz wearing
different varieties of mourning dress.

This is a particular favorite of mine. Here Schwarz is a businessman of twenty-six visiting Nuremburg, and looking
a little put out by the stray dog peeing at his right! Note the money-sacks at his belt and the fashionable cloak with arm holes.

Stark naked at twenty-nine. Schwarz noted in relation to this picture, "I had become fat and large."

Schwarz at forty-one displaying the new cloak he bought to celebrate his pending nuptials.

Wearing plate armor and bearing halberd in preparation for the attack of Emperor Charles V, age forty-six.

Now middle-aged and bearded at forty-eight, Schwarz walks with his squire (and perhaps son? I can't read the caption).

An old man: Schwarz suffered a stroke at fifty-two. He is shown here in recovery at home. I would guess that he suffers from partial paralysis of the left side in this picture, given the sling and staff.

The final portrait of Schwarz in the album.

Amazingly, these incredible images actually appear to be sub-par copies of the original paintings  - as I was writing this post I realized that the images in Rublack's book are slightly different, with a greater level of detail and brighter colors. I'd urge anyone who found this post interesting to pick up Rublack's Dressing Up. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It's one of the most boldly-argued and insightful interpretations of early modern European culture to appear in the last few years, I think. 

Image of the Week: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada

This painting, by an anonymous English artist, depicts in remarkable detail the Spanish Armada's confrontation with English vessels, probably at the momentous Battle of Gravelines. From Wikipedia:

         English losses stood at 50-100 dead and 400 wounded, and none of their ships had been sunk. But after the victory, typhus, dysentery and hunger killed many sailors and troops (estimated at 6,000–8,000) as they were discharged without pay: a demoralising dispute occasioned by the government's fiscal shortfalls left many of the English defenders unpaid for months, which was in contrast to the assistance given by the Spanish government to its surviving men.
         Although the English fleet was unable to prevent the regrouping of the Armada at the Battle of Gravelines, requiring it to remain on duty even as thousands of its sailors died, the outcome vindicated the strategy adopted, resulting in a revolution in naval warfare with the promotion of gunnery, which until then had played a supporting role to the tasks of ramming and boarding. The battle of Gravelines is regarded by some specialists in military history as reflecting a lasting shift in the naval balance in favour of the English, in part because of the gap in naval technology and armament it confirmed between the two nations, which continued into the next century. In the words of Geoffrey Parker, by 1588 'the capital ships of the Elizabethan navy constituted the most powerful battlefleet afloat anywhere in the world.'^[22]

As with many early modern paintings, the charm of this one is in the details: note the tiny figure (painted in red) clinging to the broken mast of the sinking vessel in the detail I've picked out above. Below is the full painting, along with two more details of direct cannon fire.

Europeans as 'Other,' Redux [February 2011 update]

A post today inspired by last week's post on early modern Japanese and Chinese depictions of Europeans. Thinking about that led me to look more closely at an image I've had filed away for awhile -- a remarkable example of sixteenth century Japanese Nanban ('Southern Barbarian') art depicting a group of Portuguese merchants at a Japanese port, apparently selling a small collection of exotic animals. Here is the image in full (or, at least, the most complete version of it I've found -- this is itself likely a detail from a larger painted screen):

Looking at the image more closely I realized that it could be cropped into detailed individual portraits. The result is a fascinating inversion of the early modern European ethnographic gaze -- one in which the Portuguese, rather than the Japanese, are depicted as exotic-looking foreigners.  The palpable strangeness that Portuguese clothing and physiognomy held for the painter is evident from the remarkable level of detail throughout, and especially the close attention paid to the figures' outlandish apparel.

Could this be an African slave or Afro-Portuguese crioulo?

What I find most interesting about these portraits is the acute attention given to ethnic signifiers, from skin color to clothing, and what they might tell us about the individuals of diverse backgrounds who were lumped into the undifferentiated category of 'Portuguese' in early modern Japan and elsewhere in the Portuguese empire.

(The role of animals -- some of New World origin -- in these images is another fascinating topic, one I plan to return to at a later date).

The Portuguese themselves, being, like other early modern Iberians, obsessed with limpieza de sangre, tended to depict themselves as exclusively Christian, European and, to use an anachronistic term, 'white.' Recent work on the Portuguese empire, however, is beginning to reveal a different picture. I've heard an estimate from one noted historian of slavery in the Lusophone world that up to one tenth of the population of Lisbon in the seventeenth century was of African origin, while another important recent work has revealed the pivotal role played by Portuguese Jews and Marranos in creating the networks of commerce and credit that were, in truth, the real substance of the Portuguese empire. Finally, in areas such as Goa, Sri Lanka, Cape Verde and East Timor, prominent Portuguese creole populations developed.

It is difficult to speculate about the backgrounds of the diverse Portuguese traders pictured in these images, but the potential countries of origins of these figures (from Malaysia and India to Angola and Brazil) is a testament to the truly global character of the Portuguese empire, and to the new perspectives which an outsider's gaze can bring.

A. J. R. Russell-Woods' The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: a World on the Move and Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert's A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea are two books I've been reading on this subject, both excellent in different ways. I'm particularly enjoying the Russell-Woods book.


Finally, here's an example of Nanban cuisine -- a Japanese recipe that originated as a Spanish and Portuguese dish called escabeche (I have yet to try it myself, but it looks pretty good). Other culinary cross polinations abound: apparently we even have the Portuguese to thank for tempura.