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…

This print, engraved by Jean Jacques Le Veau after a painting by Marie-Marc-Antoine Bilcoq, shows a bearded alchemist examining a flask in the warm light of an unseen window. In a humble chamber behind a wooden…

This engraving, by the French printmaker Jean Baptiste Fosseyeux, reproduces an original painting by Gerrit Dou. The work, titled "The Dropsical Woman," shows a young but finely-robed doctor examining the urine of a…

This engraving by Thomas Major, after a painting of the same subject by David Teniers II, shows a "country surgeon" at work, treating the foot of a patient. As the surgeon bends down to apply a leech to the man's foot,…

An engraving by F. Basan, after the painting by David Teniers II. The inscription below this work, Le Grimoire d'Hypocrate, refers to Hippocrates, a Greek physician often called the father of medicine in Western…

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 etching by Francesco Pedro, for Nicollo Cavalli of Venice, reproduces a painting by Francesco Maggiotto. The scene shows four individuals in a humble workroom, gathered around a brazier full of coals. The central…

A lithograph portrait of a young Michael Faraday, looking left with his hand on his hip.

This image appeared as the frontispiece to Lorenzo Lippi's posthumously published comic-heroic poem, "Il Malmantile Racquistato." The work was first released in 1676 under the pseudonym "Perlone Zipoli," an anagram of…

A half-length seated portrait of Martin Folkes (1690–1754), English mathematician and president of the Royal Society.

A portrait of a seated Matthew Boulton (1728–1809), a British industrialist and entrepreneur. He is seated in front of a window, holding a magnifying glass and a coin. In the background is a large building.

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…

A portrait of a man (possibly Athalante Legrand, a French mathematician) in academic dress seated with his right arm on a ledge, pointing to a geometric diagram.

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…

A half-length portrait of Friedrich Wöhler (1800–1882), a German chemist.

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…

A chromolithograph published in Vanity Fair of Marie and Pierre Curie and their apparatus for isolating radium chloride.

A painting in brunaille, a monochromatic image in tones of brown. This painting shows a seated alchemist in peasant garb. In his hands he holds a crucible and a pair of tongs, working before the light of a glowing fire…

A mid-length portrait of Robert Hare, MD.

An iatrochemist performs a uroscopy, examining a small glass flask, while other activities take place in his busy workshop. A woman is waiting for her diagnosis, having brought the flask of urine in the wicker basket…

A mezzotint portrait of Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829) seated at a desk with a burner lamp on his left and a quill in a holder in the foreground.

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…

An alchemist wearing a green robe uses a pair of bellows to control the heat of the fire beneath his crucible. Other vessels sit on the furnace at his side, and an animal skull hangs from a peg. A hammer and tongs…

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 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…