Images Emerging from Vials. A Study of the Pictorial Language of Alchemy in the Early Modern Period

炼金术的两种图画流派是该项目的中心：(A)在印刷机发明的同时，印刷的炼金术书籍开始包括封面。作为广受欢迎的纲领性声明，首页指出了该书的内容，并试图引起人们的兴趣。(B)炼金术的图画语言集中在瓶子的生动形象中，作为转化的便利舞台。在第一个研究领域，重点是炼金术知识的外在表征，而在第二个领域，重点是探索炼金术理论和实践这一核心领域的象征性潜力。虽然插图标题页通常是技术复制的结果，但小瓶的图画语言借鉴了插图手稿中的模型，因此可以看到手稿和印刷品之间的媒体变化。在第三个研究领域(C)，将检查标题图像和小瓶图像的交集。该项目设置在15世纪末至18世纪初的知识史、图像和媒体史的参数范围内，旨在建立炼金术图像学及其发展的系统调查。炼金术意象的世界结合了透明和不透明、亲近自然和抽象，形成了一个复杂而动态的统一体。提出了一个关键问题，即图像是否只说明了文本媒介中已经固定的内容，或者它们是否能够在很大程度上独立于文本而产生和传达意义和知识。如果印刷的所有权和船只图像主要可以从赫尔佐格8月图书馆沃尔芬布吕特尔的来源获得，必须检查外部机构的手写记录。

Two pictorial genres of alchemy are at the centre of the project: (a) At the same time as the printing press was invented, printed alchemical books began to include frontispieces. As programmatic statements of popular appeal, the frontispiece indicates the book’s contents and seeks to rouse interest. (b) The pictorial language of alchemy is concentrated in the telling image of the vial that serves as a convenient stage for the transmutation. In the first field of investigation, the focus is on the outward representation of alchemical knowledge, while in the second the iconic potential of the core area of alchemical theory and practice is explored. While illustrated title pages are usually the result of technical reproductions, the pictorial language of vials draws on models in illuminated manuscripts, so that the media change between manuscript and print can come into view. In a third field of research (c), the intersections of the title image and the vial image will be examined. Set within the parameters of the histories of knowledge, images and media from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 18th century the project aims at establishing a systematic survey of alchemical iconography and its development. The world of alchemical imagery combines transparency and opacity, closeness to nature and abstraction to form a complex and dynamic unity. The key question is raised as to whether images only illustrate what has already been fixed in the text medium or whether they can generate and convey meaning and knowledge largely independently from the text. If printed title and vessel images can primarily be obtained from sources of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, the holdings of external institutions must be checked for handwritten records.