The puzzling Albrecht Dürer’s Apollo holding his flipped name can often be straightened out in the net. But the German painter thought it just like that: backward.
[Read more…] about Albrecht Dürer and the Backwards ApolloAlchemy & Art
Andrea Pisano and the Weird Birth of Eve Rib. Part 2
Suppose we continue analyzing the role of Adam as uprooted from the Genesis story, having isolated him from the narrative context as a fish caught in dim waters. In that case, alchemists will find themselves in a cul-de-sac when trying to give a role to Eve.
[Read more…] about Andrea Pisano and the Weird Birth of Eve Rib. Part 2Andrea Pisano and the Weird Birth of Eve Rib. Part 1
In a panel by Andrea Pisano, in Giotto’s bell tower, we can see Eve as the birth of the rib from a sleeping Adam. A religious absurdity, an intriguing puzzle for a philologist and an alchemist
[Read more…] about Andrea Pisano and the Weird Birth of Eve Rib. Part 1Alchemy and Excrements in Sacred and Profane Art
The man who defecates coins is a famous leitmotif of many alchemical texts of the twentieth century. In Art profane et religion populaire au Moyen Age, by Claude Gaignebet et Jean-Dominique Lajoux, we can see how iconology is not an isolated case in the imaginary of the French late Middle Ages.
[Read more…] about Alchemy and Excrements in Sacred and Profane ArtHans Memling’s Altarpiece with Boar and January 17
Is the presence of St Anthony the Abbot enough to hint at the date of January 17 in the scene? And why Hans Memling turns the saint’s pet pig into a bristly boar?
[Read more…] about Hans Memling’s Altarpiece with Boar and January 17Dampierre Vessels, what Fulcanelli didn’t Say
Dampierre-sur-Boutonne. A vessel for honorable purposes, another for dishonorable. Fulcanelli here evades the double sense of Vas Naturae and Vas Artis. [Read more…] about Dampierre Vessels, what Fulcanelli didn’t Say
Hieronymus Bosch and the Concert in the Egg
No metaphoric at all, this Hieronymus Bosch painting is as realistic as it could be: there is a real concert inside the philosophical Egg.
[Read more…] about Hieronymus Bosch and the Concert in the EggRaffaello Sanzio and a Rod Semantics
Raffaello takes the same rod-breaking iconographic theme from his master Pietro Perugino—a semantic survey on the Latin word radius and Greek ράβδος.
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