Images Emerging from Vials. A Study of the Pictorial Language of Alchemy in the Early Modern Period

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Stefan Laube
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Early Modern History ; Art History ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 299932894

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Alchemy involves the concrete, experimental and physical handling of substances and equipment in the laboratory as well as the meticulous adherence to written instructions, be it transparent recipes in inconspicuous brochures or coded wisdom in venerable tomes. Without this handwritten and printed tradition, we would hardly know anything about this area of knowledge. The project placed the medium of the book centre stage and focused on illustrated treatises produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. The project was focussed on condensed images, (a) on cover images that could reflect the entire treatise as a pars pro toto, (b) on vial images that were to depict (creation) processes forced into the glass. (a) Probably every tenth printed work of alchemy has pictorial elements in its title apparatus. With the help of a new terminology (book faces, initial images) and the contrast scheme 'exoteric/esoteric', the title images were subjected to an evaluation. It was found that these images have different effects depending on whether opaque or transparent elements predominate. Cover and vial pictures can be absorbed in the illusion of what is depicted, but they can also deliberately create breaks in the alienation that reinforce their artificial character. (b) Vial pictures have shown the extent to which this pictorial figure can take on intrinsic traits. This type of image, which often appeared in series, had the function of adequately capturing the permanent dynamics of natura naturans. When it comes to conveying the production of the philosopher's stone, the series of images is far superior to the text. As a cinematographic dispositive, the series of vessels is of great interest to visual science because it not only thematises knowledge with visual means, but also dynamises it. In addition, this type of image has been used to analyse in detail the change in media from manuscript to print culture and to uncover gender attributions. Always embedded in text modules – either in the title on the graphically designed opening page or in the continuous text throughout the book – the cover image and vessel image have been excellently suited to verifying and deepening questions about intermediality. Sometimes the language of images is so powerful that knowledge can be conveyed in a new and effective way – in contrast to mere letter writing, which can only describe contexts one after the other and thus particularise them, and an illusionistic visual culture that exhausts itself in illustration.

Publications

• Medium & Magie. Wandlung und Wirkung in der Aufklärung, in: Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert 43/2 (2019), S. 187-192
  Stefan Laube
  
• Taumelnder Merkur. Magie der Medien in der Alchemie. Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 43/2, 261-276. Wallstein Verlag.
  Laube, Stefan
  
• Geister aus Papier. Magisches Schrifttum im Visier der Zensur, in: Florian Gassner/Nikola Roßbach (Hrsg.), Zensur vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert: Begriffe, Diskurse, Praktiken (Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik, Reihe A – Bd. 136), Berlin u.a., Lang: 2020, S. 33- 84
  Stefan Laube
  
• Heart and Vial as Communicating Tubes. Notes on the Imagery of Vessels in Early Modern Times. Sacred Heart Devotion, 135-166. Böhlau Verlag.
  Laube, Stefan
  
• Destillation und polare Vereinigung. Zur visuellen Übersetzung alchemischer Praktiken auf Titelbildern und Frontispizen (gemeinsam mit Sergei Zotov), in: Petra Feuerstein-Herz/Ute Frietsch (Hrsg.): Alchemie – Genealogie und Terminologie, Bilder, Techniken und Artefakte, Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek (Harrassowitz in Komm.), 2021, S. 191-234
  Stefan Laube
  
• Vial Movies. Nuncius, 37(1), 1-41.
  Laube, Stefan & Zotov, Sergei
  
• „Wer langweilig ist, der kauffe mich“. Beiläufiges zum `Büchlein´, in: Ephemera. Abgelegenes und Vergängliches in der Kulturgeschichte von Druck und Buch. Festschrift für Petra Feuerstein-Herz, hrsg. von Hartmut Beyer/Peter Burschel, Medium Buch 3 (2021), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2022, S. 115-136
  tefan Laube
  
• Am Anfang ist Gestaltung. Bemerkungen zu Titelblättern bei Destilliertraktaten des 16. Jahrhunderts. Episteme in Bewegung Beiträge zu einer transdisziplinären Wissensgeschichte, 275-298. Harrassowitz Verlag.
  Laube, Stefan
  
• Buch-Gesichter in Medienharmonie und Medienkonkurrenz, in: ders. (Hrsg.): Einladende Buch-Anfänge. Titelbilder des Wissens in der frühen Neuzeit, Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek (Harrassowitz in Komm.), 2022, S. 9-35
  Stefan Laube
  
• Schichten und Schächte. Unterirdische Welten auf Titelbildern, in: ders. (Hrsg.): Einladende Buch-Anfänge. Titelbilder des Wissens in der frühen Neuzeit, Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek (Harrassowitz in Komm.), 2022, S. 143-178
  Stefan Laube