Provider and number: GAČR, No. 19-02080S
Duration: 2019–2021
Recipient: Institut of Art History, CAS
Principal investigator: Ivo Purš
Cooperation: Vladimír Karpenko
The project deals with an analysis of the methods of the representation of the alchemical laboratorium in three areas of the fine arts: in genre painting, particularly the Dutch 17th Century, in the depictions accompanying alchemical treatises, both manuscript and printed books, and in the depiction of the specialized technical tracts, predominantly those focused on mining and metallurgy. The methodological starting point of the project will be both iconographic
artistic analyses as well as analyses of the depicted themes from the point of view of the history of science and the technologies used at the time. Using these methods, the importance of these images will be reassessed as they were in the social and cultural contexts in which they originated and for which they were intended.
