What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna

222 NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
Restaurierung, edited by Heinz Althöfer (Munich: Georg D.W.
Callwey, 1987), 76–87, especially 76.
8. Hollandus, Defs weit und breit berühmten Johannis Isaaci Hollandi…
Die Hand der Philosophen (Frankfurt: In Verlegung Thomas Matthiæ
Gotzens, 1667). In some versions, the fish, the dirt, and the hand
become a kind of tria prima, a set of esoteric first principles. See
also Oswald Croll, D.O.M.A…. Chymisch Kleynod (Frankfurt:
Gottfried Schonwetter, 1647), 68–74; and Just us Simplicius
Hortulanus, Die Philosophische Hand, das ist: Wahre und gründliche
Philosophische Hand-Leitung zu dem berühmten und hochgepreisenen
Stein der Weisen (Leipzig, 1719). Croll’s D.O.M.A. was originally
published as Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt: Gottfried Tampachen,
1609).
9. For a history of the idea that the alchemical work comprises
twelve steps, see Hermann Kopp, Die Alchemie in älterer und
neuerer Zeit, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: G.Olm, 1971 [1886]), vol. 2, p. 9 ff.
10. Wallich, I.Das Mineralische Gluten, Doppelter Schlangen-Stab…, II.
Der Philosophische Perl-Baum…, and III. Schlüssel zu dem Cabinet der
geheimen SchatzKammer der Natur (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Georg
Christoph Wintzer, 1722), 19.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 8
1. The procedure to make the stellated regulus of Mars (metallic
antimony) is adumbrated in Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens
(Oppenheim: Hieronymus Galler, 1617), emblem II; by Isaac
Newton (c. 1675), reported in Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Foundations of
Netwton’s Alchemy; or, The Hunting of the Greene Lyon (London and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 251–53; and by
Eirenæus Philalethes [George Starkey], Brevis manuductio ad
rubinum cœlestum, in Musæum Hermeticum Reformatum et
Amplificatum, edited by Hermann van de Sande (Frankfurt:
Hermann van de Sande, 1677), 647–99, translated as “A Brief
Guide to the Celestial Ruby,” in The Hermetic Museum, translated
by Arthur Edward Waite (London: Watkins Books, 1953 [1893]),
vol. 2, pp. 2.46–60. The practical procedure is by Lawrence
Principe (personal communication, 1991); and I thank Anthony M.
House for further discussion.
It takes a day and requires:
iron, nails 8 g.
antimony trisulphide, Sb 2S 3 18 g.
potassium nitrate, KNO 3 12.5 g.