Book to Note

Jacob Wamberg, editor. Art and Alchemy . Copenhagen : Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006. 297 pp. $54.

Reviewed by Barbara Obrist

Ten articles ranging in origin from the Middle Ages to the 20th century attempt to “challenge the current skepticism towards alchemy as a possible source for art” by exploring the relationship between visual art and alchemy. Contributions are divided into three sections on matter, gender, and collections. Most readers will be interested chiefly in the latter section. One article in this section, by Lawrence Principe and Lloyd Dewitt, uses paintings in CHF’s collections to trace the evolution of alchemical paintings from 17th-century Dutch representations of alchemists’ laboratories to late 18th- and 19th-century romantic depictions of a lost past.