This engraving by François Bernard Lépicié reproduces the painting by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. A young man in a fur-trimmed cap and robe sits reading, surrounded by books and glassware. On the shelf above sit…

This print reproduces a scene originally painted by David Teniers, in a strongly tenebrist manner, showing the alchemist in a shadowed room beneath the light of a single window. Engaged in reading, the alchemist may be…

Men feed wood into furnaces and stoke flames in this spacious laboratory, populated with large masonry furnaces for the smelting and working of metals. This scene also contains a list of alchemical elements in Latin.…

An alchemist in a calf-length robe holds up a book in one hand, reading with close attention as he stirs a substance in a small crucible. The tabletop beside him is littered with glassware and distillation vessels. In a…

A scene from the two-sided folio from Hartmann Schedel's The Book of Chronicles, or in German Das Buch der Chroniken (1493), depicting God creating Adam from clay. This clay is interpreted alchemically as the "prima…

A two-sided folio from Hartmann Schedel's The Book of Chronicles, or in German Das Buch der Chroniken (1493). On the recto is a text block on top and an image below depicting God creating Adam from clay. This clay is…

The scene, from an episode in Samuel Butler's mock-heroic epic, "Hudibras," shows the title character as he confronts the astrologer Sidrophel in a clandestine laboratory. Angry at the truths of his past which the…

This dark and eerie scene centers on the seated figure of an alchemist, pausing as he works a pair of bellows to stoke a fire. Dwarfed by his enormous chair and the looming masonry furnace at left, the alchemist peers…

This etching, after a print by Balthasar Moncornet, in turn after a drawing by Rembrandt, claims to display a portrait of the French manuscript seller Nicolas Flamel (1330-1418). Flamel, along with his wife Perenelle,…

A bearded alchemist squints closely at his experiment as he tends a small fire with a pair of hand-bellows. Beside him, his young assistant looks on. This busy and productive workroom also houses a pair of assistants…

This etching by Anton Joseph von Prenner reproduces a painting by the German painter Christopher Paudiss, known as Baudiz. Working by the glow of candlelight, a seated man studies an anatomical text at a desk…

This representation of the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, who was greatly revered in the Renaissance era, comes from chapter 25 of the publication Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes…

This wood engraving portrays Albertus Magnus (1193?-1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, who was a German Dominican friar and Catholic bishop. The inscription "Albert Le Grand Evesque de…

This depiction of German polymath, physician, legal scholar, soldier, theologian, and occult writer Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535) comes from chapter 107 of the publication Les vrais pourtraits et…

This depiction of 8th-century Arabic polymath Abu Mūsā Jābir ibn Hayyān, westernized by Europeans as "Geber," comes from chapter 33 of the publication Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins et…

This "Rosicrucian" woodcut portrait of the Swiss-German physician and alchemist Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus—better known as Paracelsus—appeared as the frontispiece to a posthumous 1567 edition of his works titled Ph…

This print, after a painting by Martin Schmidt, captures the moment when an alchemist lowers a live scorpion into a steaming crucible. Billowing smoke from the fire rises around him as he performs this portion of the…

This print, after a painting by Adriaen van Ostade, shows a humble peasant-alchemist at work before a furnace. Working with a pair of hand bellows—the source of the alchemists' mocking nickname, "puffer,"— the alchemist…

This etching reproduces in reverse a painting in the Hermitage Museum which has been attributed to Gerrit Dou. Through an illusionistic stone archway draped with an embroidered curtain, we see a finely-dressed physician…

Seated at a table, a well-dressed medical alchemist examines a flask he holds aloft. Opposite, a young man and woman anxiously await his diagnosis. Urinoscopy, or the visual examination of urine for diagnosis, was a…

In this fanciful scene of an alchemist's workroom, a bespectacled alchemist leans over to examine the contents of a bubble-like glass receiver. At left, an enormous alembic sits distilling over a furnace, extending a…

An alchemist in a heavy, fur-trimmed robe and a sober scholar's cap peers closely at a glass flask in the light of an open window. Through his spectacles he examines the liquid contents. On the table at his elbow, a…

This profile portrait claims to provide a likeness of Paracelsus, the famed Swiss-German physician, botanist, and alchemist. A champion of chemical medicines, Paracelsus criticized established medical institutions for…

In this lively print after a painting by Gerrit Dou, we see a dentist in a fur cap, proudly displaying the tooth he has just pulled from his patient. The patient, a young boy, grimaces in pain, holding onto his…

Portrait of Sir James Simpson, used as the prototype for a published illustration in the January 1894 issue of The Century Magazine, in an article about the invention of chloroform. Simpson was the first to demonstrate…