The statue in alchemy

Statues have been associated with religion and spirituality from earliest recorded time to the present-day. 'From the Minoan Age and throughout the Mediterranean world of antiquity, statuettes of gods in human or animal shape were carved from terracotta, bronze, wood, or stone. They had religious significance and were deposited in graves or dedicated to the gods in shrines and in private homes, where they exercised a protective influence upon the dead, upon the community or upon the family. They were tutelary symbols'. [1] 

The statue also performs a number of roles within the western esoteric traditions of hermeticism and alchemy. In the Corpus Hermeticum, a mixture of  Egyptian, Greek and Gnostic wisdom texts originating from the early Christian era, a dialogue between the mythic sage Hermes Trismegistus and Asclepius occurs. Trismegistus celebrates humankind’s ability for learning the art of “god-making” – making statues come alive by drawing divine powers into them, stating-

TRISMEGISTUS : But the figures of gods that humans form have been shaped from both natures - from the divine, which is purer and more divine by far, and from the material of which they are built, whose nature falls short of the human - and they represent not only the heads but all the limbs and the whole body. Always mindful of its nature and origin, humanity persists in imitating divinity, representing its gods in semblance of its own features, just as the father and master made his gods eternal to resemble him.

ASCLEPIUS : Are you talking about statues, Trismegistus?

TRISMEGISTUS : Statues, Asclepius, yes. See how little trust you have! 

I mean statues ensouled and conscious, filled with spirit and doing great deeds; statues that foreknow the future and predict it by lots, by prophecy, by dreams and by many other means; statues that make people ill and cure them, bringing them pain and pleasure as each deserves’. [2]

After being damaged in an earthquake in 27 BCE  the eastern colossus of Memnon, one of two statues of the ruler Amenhotep III (14th century BCE) was believed to emit sound. Many travelers throughout antiquity travelled to Egypt to visit Amenhotep’s statue in the hope of hearing it, including Roman Emperors. The Greek historian Strabo, the travelogue author Pausanias and the Roman satirist Juvenal, all claimed to have heard Amenhotep’s statue. Pausanias compared its sound to 'the string of a lyre breaking’, Strabo reported it sounding, 'like a blow', but its sound was also likened to the striking of brass or whistling.

The seminal Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung in his Mysterium coniunctionis (1956) observed - ‘the statue plays a mysterious role in ancient alchemy’[3]. 

Jung noted that the medieval cleric Thomas Norton (1433-1513) in his Ordinall of Alchemy depicts the seven metals/planets as statues. In the anthology of alchemical texts Aurora Consurgens (1566) Mother Alchemy or mater alchemia is portrayed as a statue of different metals, as are the seven statues in the writings of Raymond Lully. In the German Rosicrucian Michael Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae (1617) the protagonist on his peregrinations through the continents encounters a statue of a golden-headed Mercurius who points in the direction of Paradise.

Commenting upon the biblical verse, ‘And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house’. (Genesis 28: 22) C.G. Jung theorized - ‘If our conjecture is correct, the statue could therefore be the Cabbalistic equivalent of the lapis philosophorum.’ [4] In agreement with the Gnostic’s teaching that the biblical Adam was a  'corporeal or 'lifeless' statue, Jung concluded his survey of the statue’s role in alchemy stating- 

'The statue stands for the inert materiality of Adam, who still needs an animating soul; it is thus a symbol for one of the main preoccupations of alchemy'. [5]

Statues, as C.G. Jung detected, are often encountered in alchemical themed artwork and literature, frequently within the setting of a rose garden, sometimes speaking or guiding the questing adept, or even emitting an ethereal light from their eyes. The alchemical operations of thawing and warming in order to bestow life upon the inert, readily lent itself to the notion of statues coming alive. The alchemical author J. D. Mylius (c.1583-1642) in his Philosophia Reformata (1622) stated –'It is a great mystery to create souls, and to mould the lifeless body into a living statue.’

  

In the first of the illustrated series of Philosophia Reformata (above), a group of alchemists drink from statues which spout wine. When intoxicated with vinum nostrum (our wine) they walk into the dark corners of a mountain in order to begin the task of mining the prima materia from the rock, intending to refine its impure metals into gold.

There are other instances of statues becoming animated. and of  their relationship to the esoteric in the arts. In Shakespeare’s late drama The Winter's Tale  a statue by ‘that rare Italian master, Julio Romano’ of Queen Hermione comes to life. In reality however, the Queen only imitates a statue in pose before coming to life. [5] 

The statue’s ability to transcendently communicate the invisible is alluded in Sir Thomas Browne’s discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) in the numerological observation-

‘in their groves of the Sun this was a fit number, by multiplication to denote the days of the year; and might Hieroglyphically speak as much, as the mystical Statua of Janus in the Language of his fingers’.

But perhaps one of the most dramatic of all tales of statues coming to life occurs in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (K527). Mozart’s anti-hero, hastily returning home  at night after an amorous escape through a graveyard, encounters a statue. He dismissively invites it to dinner. In one of the most intense and psychologically loaded acts of the entire operatic repertoire, the statue of the Commendatore calls upon the Don, knocking loud at his door. Failing to persuade him to repent from his dissolute lifestyle, the Stone Guest requests the Don shake hands with him. Locking his hand in an icy, unbreakable grip, the Stone Guest drags the unrepentant Don Giovanni down into the infernal regions.

The many and varied roles the statue plays in the esoteric arts suggests that the four statuettes of Christopher Layer’s funerary monument in the church of Saint John the Baptist at Maddermarket, Norwich, with their thinly-veiled planetary and elemental symbolism, are superb examples of the statue’s role in spiritual alchemy; for, to repeat, the reviving of the inert and inanimate soul of man is fundamental to the alchemist’s quest to animate the spiritual man within. 

If conjecture has any substance, the guiding psychopomp of alchemy and the conductor of souls (frequently depicted standing upon a rotundum to denote his world-wide influence in alchemical iconography) Mercurius, is alluded on the Layer monument in the form of Vanitas a playful, bubble-blowing child standing upon a rotundum. [7]

Notes

[1] Penguin Dictionary of Symbols ed Jean Chevalier

[2] Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

Brian P. Copenver 1995 Cambridge University Press

[3] CW 14 :  The Statue,  paragraphs  559 -569

[4]  Ibid.

[5]  Ibid.

[6]  The Winter’s Tale Act 5 scene 2

[7] Examples include- Figurarum Aegyptorum secretarum (Ms. 18th c) and Canari Le imagini de I dei  (1581) in C. G. Jung CW vol. 12 illustrations 164 and 165

That Vulcan gave Arrows unto Apollo and Diana

What is more beautiful than the Quincunx, which, however one views it, presents straight lines.

- Quintilian

Just how Sir Thomas Browne’s discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) has not been recognised as exemplary of literary writings influenced by hermetic philosophy remains a mystery. The  first page of Browne's discourse alludes to no less than six major themes, symbols and preoccupations associated with western esoteric traditions including hermeticism.

Opening with highly original proper-name symbolism featuring the patron "deity" associated with Paracelsian alchemy, namely Vulcan - including Browne’s study of comparative religion - employing highly original spiritual-optical imagery - speculating upon the Creation and life’s beginnings - citing Plato’s discourse the Timaeus, and finally, utilizing the potent alchemical symbol of Sol et Luna, Browne could not spell out the esoteric theme of his discourse louder if he tried.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps because of its esoteric theme, the reception and literary appreciation of  The Garden of Cyrus over the past three hundred and fifty years, has been little more than a potted history of the many prejudices, misapprehensions and hostilities surrounding the hermetic arts. Within twenty years of its publication, the theologian Richard Baxter opposed Browne's Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic vision, declaring to newly-ordained priests in 1678 -

'You shall have more.. solid truth than those in their learned Network treatises'. 

Though appreciative of the stoic gloom and doom of Urn-Burial, Victorians literary critics considered The Garden of Cyrus to be an aberration of the imagination. Walter Pater, a leading  Victorian literary critic complained of  Browne’s Platonic inclinations -

'his fancy carries him off it into some kind of chimeric frivolousness here'. 

Edmund Gosse was another who detested it,  petulantly stating 

'gathering his forces it is Quincunx, Quincunx, all the way until the very sky itself is darkened with revolving Chess-boards' 

Yet Gosse also conceded- 

'this radically bad book contains some of the most lovely paragraphs which passed from an English pen during the seventeenth Century'. 

Thus the publishing practice began, utterly against Browne's creative intentions, of dissecting his literary diptych and of publishing Urn-Burial separately, an erroneous trend which persists to this day. [1]

Literary critics however have rarely understood the pervasive influence of the hermetic arts, or the vitality of the esoteric, especially during the 1650’s decade. The decade of the Protectorate of Cromwell saw a ‘boom-period’ in the publication of esoteric literature, encouraged by a relaxation in printing-laws and the psychological Endzeitpsychosis of the era. There can be as few readers now, as in 1658, who have any idea of the artistic motivation behind Browne's penning a Pythagorean hymn in praise of the number five and Quincunx pattern during England’s short-lived Republic. The solitary  contemporary figure of the Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan (c.1621-65) however may have been alert to the hermetic content of Browne's literary diptych. Alluding to the dominant symbol from each respective Discourse  Vaughan defines Mercurius as -

‘our true, hidden vessel, the Philosophical Garden, wherein our sun rises and sets'.

In many ways The Garden of Cyrus with its mention of astrology, Egyptology, the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras, the kabbalah, physiognomy and Paracelsus, is a condensed compendium of esoteric lore of interest to Browne. Its central chapter also features Browne’s contribution to the emerging new science. Dozens of sharp-sighted, detailed and meticulously recorded botanical observations are recorded.

Like other alchemist-physicians, Browne was fascinated with life's beginnings and observations upon embryology, germination and generation feature in the central chapter of the discourse.

The Garden of Cyrus opens with the Creation being likened to the alchemical opus - God operating as a demi-urge figure and cosmic alchemist.

'That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day; When the diffused light contracted into Orbs, and shooting rays, of those Luminaries.'

This extraordinary cosmic opening, besides naming the Roman god nominated by Paracelsus as representative of the alchemical art and introducing the important themes of Light, optics and Space, also features Browne’s study of comparative religion. Browne detected that the ancient Greek myth which describes the god of fire Vulcan donating arrows, i.e. Light, to Apollo and Diana, as recorded in the Fabulae of Hyginus [2] was a Creation myth in which - just like in the Biblical account of the Creation - Light appears upon the fourth Day. (And God said Let there be Light. Genesis 1:3). The ancient Greek myth was in Browne’s view no blind apprehension but confirmation of the Biblical account of the Creation.

Browne reconciled the wisdom of antiquity to Christianity in exactly the same way as Renaissance scholars Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, by giving credence to a Prisca Theologia, that is, a belief in a single, true theology threading through all religions whose wisdom passed in a golden chain through a series of mystics and prophets, including Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Plato. In particular, the mythic Hermes Trismegistus was believed to be a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. Christianity appropriated hermetic teaching for their own purposes, proposing that Hermes Trismegistus  or ‘thrice greatest’ on account of his being the greatest priest, philosopher and king, was a contemporary of Moses. Such imaginative comparative religion not only justified the study of philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato, but also sanctioned the antiquity, wisdom and superiority of the Bible to devout Christians. 

Proceeding from 'plainer descriptions' by 'pagan pens' Browne next acknowledges the primary source of another influential Creation myth, Plato's discourse the Timaeus.

'Plainer Descriptions there are from Pagan pens, of the creatures of the fourth day; While the divine Philosopher unhappily omitteth the noblest part of the third'.

With its myth of the lost civilization of Atlantis, description of the eternal, archetypal forms and proposal that the world was a living being or anima mundi Plato’s Timaeus, first translated in 1462 by Marsilio Ficino, wielded a near Bible-like authority amongst thinkers, artists and mystics throughout the Renaissance. The Timaeus was of particular interest and influence upon the imagination of alchemist and hermetic philosopher alike. Browne speculated upon the existence of the anima mundi in Religio Medici thus-

'Now besides these particular and divided Spirits, there may be (for ought I know) an universal and common Spirit to the whole world. It was the opinion of Plato, and is yet of the Hermeticall philosophers; if there be a common nature that unites and ties the scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not be  one that unites them all?'  [3] 

Throughout his literary diptych, Browne displays an uncommon familiarity with Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher’s writings are well-represented in his vast library. Browne even calls the 'father of western mysticism' with the self-same phrase as Ficino and John Dee, describing him as the divine philosopher. (Divine pertaining to Plato’s theology rather than the modern term of adulation). The influence of Platonic thought looms large throughout The Garden of Cyrus, in particular the Greek philosopher’s advancing of the anima mundi or Universal Spirit permeating Nature. 

According to C.G. Jung -

'The alchemist thought he knew better than anyone else that, at the Creation, at least a little bit of divinity, the anima mundi, entered into material things and was caught there'. [4] 

Just as the diptych companion discourse Urn-Burial depicts the human soul trapped within the corporeal body, so too in The Garden of Cyrus Browne endeavours to demonstrate that the anima mundi or World-Soul is imprisoned in nature, alluding to the anima mundi or World-Soul on several occasions.

In the 'Great Work' of alchemy the initial dark nigredo stage is followed by the albedo or whitening phase and the light of illumination. While Urn-Burial represents the nigredo stage, its polar opposite and antithesis The Garden of Cyrus represents the albedo and growth of consciousness. According to Jung-

'By means of the opus which the adept likens to the creation of the world, the albedo or whitening is produced.' [5]  

Starting from the Garden of Eden Browne traces the ubiquity of the Quincunx pattern, firstly as a method of planting to the ancients. The Garden of Eden was a favourite symbol in Christian iconography of Paradise. Its early appearance in The Garden of Cyrus as representing the albedo stage of Browne's diptych, is confirmed by Jung's observation that-

'For the alchemists Paradise was a favourite symbol of the albedo, the regained state of innocence'. [6]

Gardens are often mentioned in alchemical literature. At their highest level they symbolize civilization and man's mastery of Nature, as well as being symbolic of pleasure, Nature's beauty, Order and Rationality, themes highly relevant to Browne's discourse. 

The densely-packed symbolism and imagery of the opening paragraph of The Garden of Cyrus also alludes to the potent symbol of the alchemical opus, the hierosgamos, or sacred wedding, or Conjunctio of Sol et Luna.  Sun and moon are among the most psychologically potent of all symbols, encapsulating nature's greatest division (male and female) as well as the active and passive, light and dark, and consciousness and unconsciousness. Browne’s usage of this commonplace symbol is another strong clue to the alchemical nature of The Garden of Cyrus. 

Mention of the alchemical conjunctio occurs several times in the discourse in images and symbols drawn from nature, mythology and esoteric literature.

There's also a Gnostic element in Browne’s literary mandala with its highly original usage of optical imagery of light and darkness.The basic mandala of Gnosticism and alchemy, the Ouroboros can also be detected as a template of the diptych. Throughout Urn-Burial  imagery of shade and darkness abounds. As the nigredo stage of the alchemical opus, the discourse is 'lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing' as Browne succinctly defines it. In contradistinction, throughout the pages of The Garden of Cyrus imagery of light including starry, astral imagery occurs. At its apotheosis, in its short revelatory rudebo the 'patron deity' of Vulcan  appears, before a final coda and a circular return of night, darkness and doubt concludes the discourse.

Developing his optical imagery in The Garden of Cyrus Browne in a rapturous, cosmic outburst, which concludes in a subtle, humorous observation.

Darkness and light hold interchangeable dominions, and alternately rule the seminal state of things. Light unto Pluto is darkness unto Jupiter. Legions of seminal Idea's lie in their second Chaos and Orcus of Hippocrates; till putting on the habits of their forms, they show themselves upon the stage of the world, and open dominion of Jove. They that held the Stars of heaven were but rays and flashing glimpses of the Empyreal light, through holes and perforations of the upper heaven, took of the natural shadows of stars, while according to better discovery the poor Inhabitants of the Moon have but a polary life, and must passe half their days in the shadow of that Luminary.

The concept of polarity (a word introduced by Browne into English language in its scientific context) is an essential component of much esoteric symbolism. The opposites and their union were a fundamental quest of Hermetic philosopher and alchemist alike. Browne’s literary diptych, like all good mandalas of any psychological depth, is a complex of opposites or complexio oppositorum  in imagery, truths and symbols. It corresponds well to the polarity of the Micro-Macro schemata of Hermeticism in which the little world of man and his mortality (as in Urn-Burial) is mirrored by the vast Macrocosm of Eternal forms in The Garden of Cyrus. 

The alchemical maxim solve et coagula (decay and growth) also closely approximates the respective themes of the diptych. The Gnostic progression from darkness and unknowingness to Light and awareness using optical imagery has already been noted. 

The alchemical feat of palingenesis, the revivification of a plant from its ashes, as reputedly performed by the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus is another template upon which the Discourses may be considered to bear comparison. The funerary ashes of Urn-Burial burst into  flower in the botanical delights of The Garden of Cyrus. 

Browne’s hermetic vision of the interconnection of Nature via the closely related symbols of the Quincunx pattern, the  number five and the figure X  - identify The Garden of Cyrus, however much previously misunderstood is a quintessential work of Hermetic literature. The mission of its author is synonymous with the ultimate quest of alchemist and hermetic philosopher alike, namely, to redeem mankind from the dark prison of unknowingness (as portrayed in Urn-Burial) towards recognition of the wisdom of God, found in number, shape and archetype, all of which are transcendently delineated by the Quincunx pattern through Browne's Dedalian imagination. 

In an era of considerable psychological stress and uncertainty, the Quincunx pattern in The Garden of Cyrus assumes a spiritual, mandala-like significance, suggestive that Browne believed he had been permitted to glimpse into Nature's highest arcana and thus acquire the wisdom of the Stone of the Philosophers no less. Browne’s fixation with the Quincunx pattern may therefore be interpreted as none other than his recognition of a symbol of totality and wholeness - the Unio mentalis or self-knowledge of the alchemists. As ever the foremost interpreter of alchemy in the 20th century, C. G. Jung places Sir Thomas Browne's creativity in clearer perspective, helpfully and tantalizingly Jung notes -

'The quinarius or Quino (in the form of 4 + 1 i.e. Quincunx) does occur as  as symbol of wholeness (in china and occasionally in alchemy) but relatively rarely'. [7]

Crucially, in words utterly apt to Browne's creativity in The Garden of Cyrus C.G.Jung observed- 

Intellectual responsibility seems always to have been the alchemists weak spot... The less respect they showed for the bowed shoulders of the sweating reader, the greater was their debt.. to the unconscious. The alchemists were so steeped in their inner experiences, that their whole concern was to devise fitting images and expressions regardless whether they were intelligible or not. They performed the inestimable service of having constructed a phenomenology of the unconscious long before the advent of psychology. The alchemists did not really know what they were writing about. Whether we know today seems to me not altogether sure. [8]

See also -

Urn-Burial and the Nigredo of alchemy

Dr. Browne's alchemical mandala

'the theatre of ourselves' -the proto-psychology of Dr. Browne

 Notes

[1] American academic Stephen Greenblatt perpetuates this error in his recent edition 

[2] Section 140 in Hyginus Fabulae listed in 1711 Sales Catalogue page.13 no.35 

[3] Religio Medici Part  I Section 32

[4]CW 14 764 

[5] CW 9 ii: 230

[6]  CW 9 ii: 372.
[7] C. W.  18: 1602

[8] CW 16:497

This essay has been roughly hammered out in time for the anniversary of Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus. Both discourses have dedicatory epistles dated May 1st Norwich.

Hubert Gerhard

The angle from which a cast of Hubert Gerhard's highly dramatic sculpture Perseus and Medusa (above) has been photographed highlights quintessential characteristics associated with late Mannerist art - violent and/or erotic subject-matter, often within a mythological setting, startling imagery of striking impact and psychological depth, and the utilization of a distorted or unusual perspective.

The myths of antiquity became increasingly popular during the Renaissance. The Greek myth of Perseus rescuing Andromeda for example was painted by many artists in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Another popular myth as subject-matter in art, and equally dramatic, was that of the hero Perseus and his encounter with the hideous, serpent-haired gorgon Medusa. Whoever gazed upon Medusa's face immediately turned into stone. Perseus however, successfully avoided such a fate and decapitated her. 

Like several other artists of his generation, the Dutch sculptor Hubert Gerhard (b. Hertogenbosch c.1550-1620) left his homeland as a young man, probably to escape from the political upheavals and iconoclasm experienced by the Netherlands circa 1566-67. Gerhard moved to Italy, training how to design and cast bronze sculptures in Florence in the circle of Giambologna, who heavily influenced his style. Gerhard's dominant subject-matter, as with many Northern Mannerist artists, was the mythological gods of antiquity. His early patrons, the banking family the Fuggers of Ausgsburg, commissioned Gerhard to create for their castle at Kirchheim, a mantelpiece, bronze ornaments for a fountain of Mars and Venus and a bronze on a base bordered by fantastic imagery.

While at Augsburg, Gerhard first met the Florentine-trained artist, Friedrich Sustris (1540-1599). When Sustris became the artistic superintendent for Wilhelm V of Bavaria (1548-1626) he persuaded Gerhard to live in Munich, where the sculptor duly resided from 1584 to 1597. Gerhard created large bronzes for  the fountain, garden and grotto of Wilhelm's ducal palace. He prepared the monumental bronze St. Michael Vanquishing Lucifer that adorns the façade of the Jesuit church of St. Michael's in Munich and with Carlo's assistance he also made about fifty over life-size terracotta statues of saints and angels which line the interior of St. Michael's church.

With the financial crisis of 1597, which forced Wilhelm V to abdicate, Gerhard and most of the court's artists were suddenly unemployed. Between 1599 and 1613 Gerhard next worked under the patronage of Archduke Maximilian III of Austria, first in Bad Mergentheim and then in Innsbruck. Unlike Wilhelm V however, Maximilian III commissioned mostly small-scale bronzes, including equestrian portraits and mythological statuettes, in addition to his tomb and other projects.

In 1602 Gerhard added two bronze sculptures to the Augustus fountain in Augsburg in which the four rivers of the city are represented by statues of four river gods around the fountain's basin, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II when viewing  them critically said  -

 the workmanship is subtle and pure, but the positioning of the figures is rather poor. Master Adriaen, as his Imperial Majesty's sculptor is far more accomplished in this. 

Rudolf's withering remark highlights the rivalry which existed between two art-loving connoisseurs, for at the time Gerhard was employed by Rudolf's younger brother, Archduke Maximilian III of Austria, while his contemporary Adriaen de Vries (1556-1626) was resident sculptor for  Rudolf II.

Gerhard returned to Munich in 1613, where he worked until his death seven years later.

Although Gerhard worked primarily in the medium of bronze he also sculptured in terracotta a quartet of personifications of the seasons. In Gerhard's set of four figurines Spring sits holding a cornucopia or horn or plenty, Summer also female, holds a sheaf of corn, Autumn is represented by a cheerful, wine-drinking youth, while a care-worn, bearded old man personifies Winter.

                                                                                                                           

There's an extraordinary affinity to certain themes and imagery encountered in Gerhard's Four Seasons to the four marble figurines of the Layer monument (anon. Norwich, circa 1600). Intriguingly, Hubert's quartet  are also a complex of opposites in their juxtaposition of classical antiquity and contemporary figures, mortal and deity, male and female, youth and age, pleasure and suffering. Gerhard's sculptures are therefore valuable pieces in completing the jigsaw puzzle of identification of the stylistic source and possible sculptor of the Layer monument's quartet of figurines.

Another remarkable affinity of style occurs between Gerhard's sculpture of the mythological sea-god Neptune (below) and the figurine of Labor (figure higher up on the right here) of the Layer monument. Dating little more than a decade apart, both figures are depicted with wrinkled brows, gnarled high cheek-bones, care-worn expressions and shaggy tufted, highly-stylized designer beards.

Neptune 

The combined factors of close chronology, Gerhard's predilection for producing sculpture in groups of four, his juxtaposition of figures from Classical antiquity alongside the contemporary, as in his allegorical personifications of  Four Seasons, are indicative of an affinity between him and the anonymous sculptor of the Layer monument. However, the quality of artistry, the sculptural medium of marble and geographical distance make it fairly unlikely that the four figurines of the Layer monument were carved by Gerhard, who worked primarily in bronze. In any event Gerard's essentially Northern Mannerist art retains an affinity in subject-matter and style to the Layer monument's figurines. Indeed, as its recorded that Gerhard maintained a workshop with apprentices named as Colin and Alexander Kaspar Gras, it's possible the four figurines of the Layer monument share not only the esoteric template of the quaternity with Gerhard's Four Seasons, but may originate from a workshop closely associated with the Dutch sculptor. 

Notes

I  have no qualms in admitting that most of this post is copied from Wikipedia, for upon discovering it had no entry on  Hubert Gerhard  I wrote one, based and indebted to this review -

Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance (review)
Jeffrey Chipps Smith
From: Renaissance Quarterly
Volume 59, Number 1, Spring 2006
pp. 241-243

Link to page of sculpture by  Hubert Gerhard

Edward Browne at the Court of Emperor Leopold

Emperor Leopold I in costume as Acis in La Galatea.

After his continental medical studies based at Padua, Montpellier and Leyden circa 1627-30, Sir Thomas Browne hardly ever left the city of Norwich, other than in a professional capacity, usually when visiting patients residing at one of the many ancient seats of the gentry scattered throughout Norfolk's wealthy farming hinterland.

In contrast to his father, Dr. Browne's eldest son, Edward Browne (1644-1708) travelled extensively before settling down to marriage and establishing a medical practise in London. Edward Browne was educated at Cambridge and became first a Fellow, and eventually the President of the Royal College of Physicians. He possessed characteristic traits associated with a youthful traveller - an insatiable curiosity towards the natural world including its people and their customs, the linguistic skills necessary to relate to all, and letters of introduction and relevant social connections to open doors and receive hospitality. Wherever Edward Browne travelled he acted as the ears and eyes of his stay-at-home father, keeping him informed in regular correspondence.

In total Edward Browne made three long journeys. In the first he travelled to Italy and came home through France. In 1668 he sailed from Yarmouth to Rotterdam visiting Leyden, Amsterdam and Utrecht, ending his journey at Cologne. His next destination was Vienna. Using the Hapsburg capital as a base he visited the mines of Hungary and travelled as far as Styria and Carinthia in southern Austria and Thessaly in Greece. Its in correspondence while in Thessaly that a strong reaction of parental anxiety and concern by his loving and indulgent parent's towards Edward Browne's proposal to travel as far as Turkey can be detected. His last European tour was in 1673, visiting Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege, Louvain, Ghent and Bruges. Returning home, Edward Browne published a small quarto travelogue, the full title of which gives some indication of his wide travels - A Brief Account of some Travels in Hungaria, Styria, Bulgaria, Thessaly, Austria, Serbia, Carynthia, Carniola, and Friuli (1673). All three of Edward Browne's travelogues were published together in 1686. [1]

Stairway to Sublimation

In the foreground of an illustration in Alchemia (1606) by Andreas Libavius (above) two lions clash, locked in fusion upon impact they share one conjoined head. Together they emit a powerful, vaporous blast. These two duelling lions are framed by a series of rampant lions ascending a stairway. At the top of the ziggurat pyramid sits King Sol and Queen Luna enthroned. Above, at the apex there is a verdant tree. Seven  planetary stars hover above it.

Andrea Libavius (1555-1616) was a German physician and university lecturer whose major work Alchemia (1597) became a European best-seller which went through several editions in his life-time. Although described as the first systematic chemistry-book, book two of its six books is entitled A dialogue on the Philosophical Mercurius, while book three discusses Azoth, an arcane name for the mercury of the philosophers and universal spirit of the world. In both chapters all such mysticism is roundly condemned as detrimental to the true advancement of the science of chemistry.

Like many transitional figures in the late Renaissance Andreas Libavius was a Janus-like intellect. He advanced practical knowledge of chemistry while retaining a belief in the transmutation of metals. He vigorously attacked the ideas of Paracelsus as harmful to the development of chemistry, yet was well-versed in mystical Paracelsian thought himself. Libavius also reproduces in Alchemia John Dee's highly influential glyph in Monas Hieroglyphica, a series of theorems upon  the mystical symbol dedicated to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1564.

The pages of Alchemia are a curious conglomerate on practical advice on how to prepare and use chemicals, in particular strong, corrosive acids, alongside illustrations on how to acquire the Stone of the Philosophers (above). Because acids were important for purifying, separating and cleansing metals, in alchemical literature they were often likened to lions for their dangerous and devouring properties. Sulphuric acid, also known as ‘oil of vitriol’ in the sixteenth century was popular amongst followers of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541) while precipitation of silver from nitric acid solutions baffled and fascinated alchemists of the era.

The startling image of two lions locked in fusion is characteristic of Northern Mannerist art which often employed bizarre imagery from esoteric sources. The image can also be found in the frontispiece of the cosmic mandala of Opus medico-chymicum (1618) by J. D. Mylius (1583-1642) and in his Philosophia Reformata (1622) below. Such explicitly shared symbolism suggests the artist of Philosophia Reformata is directly alluding to the original two-in-one lion imagery of Alchemia.

Symbolism involving the lion has a rich and complex history. Because it is essentially a symbol of the self, the lion has many, even contradictory meanings. At its highest level its symbolism is associated with Kingship, Nobility, Dignity, Bravery and the Hero. These archetypal qualities are reflected in the historical figure of  King Richard the Lion-heart and in modern times in the popularity of characters in films such as  The Wizard of Oz (1939) in which a cowardly lion quests for courage and Disney's animation, The Lion King (1994).  On a lower level the lion symbolically represents the animal passions, blood-lust, fierceness, violence and (an aural  pun here) raw nature.

The index to C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-56) lists over 50 references to lions, including as a symbol for both Christ and the devil. Symbols can easily absorb such paradox for like the human psyche they are paradoxical in nature. The Lion features among the archetypes of the animal-circle known as the Zodiac and in Christianity's major re-synthesis of astrology for its own purpose in the Tetramorph of the four evangelists.  In the four-fold symbol of the tetramorph the Lion represents Saint Mark and the strength of Christ. Because of its association with Kingship and Royalty the Lion is also emblematic of kingdoms as well as cities including Venice, Heidelberg and Norwich.

Whenever two lions are encountered in alchemical symbolism, often in the form of the Green and the Red Lion, the clash of opposites within the human psyche as well as the reconciled and united antagonists are evoked. In the extraordinary illustration in Alchemia rampant lions are seen ascending a stairway, a common symbol of spiritual ascent throughout world religion iconography. The scaled ascent suggests that the initial conflict may need to be repeated several times before reaching a final sublimation and harmony, as represented by Sol et Luna. With its bestial, lower nature and higher noble nature, the two lions is a fitting symbol of the warring factions at conflict in the human psyche, and exemplary of the depth and understanding of the human condition by alchemists with their  arcane symbolism. Not unlike the  the Mermaid, the two lions in their dual role of healing and harmful are a lesser-known symbol of the elusive 'deity' of alchemy, Mercurius.

Returning to the alchemists and early chemists of the late 16^th and 17^th centuries who investigated nature’s properties, one shudders to think of the possible great minds whose lives may have ended prematurely through dabbling in unknown, hidden hazards while experimenting. Such speculative thinking lays at the heart of the stoical meditations of Browne’s Urn-Burial.

Who knows whether the best of men be remembered, or whether other remarkable persons may have been forgotten ?

Browne and early scientists such as Libavius occasionally and unwittingly one suspects, courted harm in their examination of the physical properties of nature, which includes poisons and toxic substances, fungi and corrosive acids for example. The novice and would-be alchemist are warned of the hidden dangers in  alchemical experimentation in the tract Aurelia Occulta.

I am the poison-dropping dragon, who is everywhere and can be cheaply had....My fire and water destroy and put together; from my body you may extract the green lion and the red. But if you do not have exact knowledge of me, you will destroy your five senses with my fire. From my snout there comes a spreading poison that has brought death to many.[1]

The peculiar properties of the liquid-metal mercury in particular acted as a kind of psychic play-dough upon the imagination of the enquiring alchemist, as can be seen in Browne’s remarkable admission-

I have often beheld as a miracle, that artificial resurrection and revivification of Mercury, how being mortified into thousand shapes it assumes again its own, and returns into its numerical self. [2]

Throughout the pages of Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica  numerous experiments are recorded. Book two of his encyclopaedia includes investigation of the properties of jet, glass, porcelain, coral, magnetism, amber and static electricity.The wide-ranging nature of Browne's many experiments can be gleaned from the entry - Candle, one discharged out of a Musket through an inch board, while the entry - Philosophers Stone, not improbable to be procured reveals like Libavius before him, Browne was a Janus-like figure in the history of science, simultaneously assisting and anticipating advancements in the development of modern science, while also critically assessing ideas associated with western esoteric traditions.

Although Andreas Libavius (above) and his influential chemistry book Alchemia isn't listed in the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Thomas Browne and his son Edward’s libraries, it’s worth remembering that the fate of Browne’s library was vulnerable to abstraction for almost 30 years before finally being auctioned. And in fact Libavius is fleetingly mentioned by name by Browne, referencing one of his books in Pseudodoxia. It's highly unlikely that such an informed reader and scholar as Browne would not have known of Libavius and of his influence upon the new science of chemistry.

It’s in book four of Alchemia that an illustration of the monument of the alchemical opus can be found. Its useful to juxtapose these two different versions of the diagram De Lapide Philosophorum to appreciate just how much symbolism can vary and alter within a short period of time in the alchemical imagination. Adam Maclean speculates upon their shared symbolism -

These are interesting and yet puzzling. On a superficial view they are very similar in structure, but when one examines the symbolic components in depth, they obviously are emblematizing entirely different ideas. The imagery in places is so very different between the two emblems. I wonder what the source was for these two emblems. Were they entirely devised afresh as illustrations for Libavius' text, or were they taken from some earlier manuscript source ? 

Both versions of Libavius' diagram on the Philosopher's Stone includes lions. A lion can be seen on the bottom sphere of the left version while in the version on the right the King is described as in the company of a golden Lion. The relationship between Libavius' two mysterious diagrams (below) which were first printed not in the first edition of 1597 but in the 1606 edition of Alchemia raises tantalizing chicken and egg questions surrounding the source of the Layer monument's rich and complex symbolism. 

 

Books by Libavius include –

* Neoparacelsia (1594) an attack on the use of aurum potabile as a panacea.

* Rerum chymicarum epistola forma (1594) A collection of correspondence to German philosophers and physicians warning of the evils of the new Paracelsian iatrochemistry.

* Alchemia (1597) His most famous work includes advice on the preparation of strong acids alongside a declaration in the belief of the transmutation of metals.

* Singularium (1599-1601)  lectures on natural philosophy.

* Defensio …alchymicae transmutatriae (1604)  an attack on the French physician Guibert for his denying of the truth of the transmutation of metals and a statement of belief of the Philosopher’s Stone being known to the alchemists.

*Alchymia triumphans (1607)  926pp. Libavius’s contribution to the confused battle and debate between supporters of Paraclsus, Hermeticism, Galen and Aristotle.

(Bibliographic source:  Haeffner- Dictionary of Alchemy  Harper Collins 1991)

Colossal Greek funerary marble lion 350-200 BC from Knidos, south-west Asia Minor,Turkey. British Museum.

Notes

[1]  Aurelia Occulta  from vol. 4 of Theatrum Chemicum. 
Listed in Sir Thomas Browne's library in 1711 Sales Catalogue page 25 no.125
[2] Religio Medici Part 1 paragraph 48