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

NOTES TO CHAPTER I 201
6. The concept comes from Plotinus; see Ubaldo Ramún Pérez Paoli,
Der plotinische Begriff von Hypostasis und die augustinische
Bestimmung Gottes als Subiectum (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag,
1990).
7. Damisch, La Fenêtre jaune cadmium, ou, Les dessous de la peinture
(Paris: Seuil, 1984).
8. Matthew Moncrieff Pattison Muir, A History of Chemical Theories and
Laws (New York: J.Wiley and Sons, 1907), reprinted (New York:
Arno, 1975), 4 ff.
9. “Unarms non est numerus, & ex ipso numerus omnis consurgit.”
This sentence is the subject of a commentary by Dee’s
contemporary Gerhard Dorn [Gerardus Dorneus], in the Theatrum
chemicum, 6 vols. (Strassburg: E. Zetzner, 1659–61 [1602]), 390–91.
See Josten, “A Translation,” op. cit., 108.
10. lamblichus, Theology of Arithmetic, translated by R. Waterfield
(Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1988), 38. For the original see Tα
Θεoλoγoυµενα της Apιθµητικης, edited by V. de Falco (Leipzig:
Teubner, 1922).
11. See Marcelin Berthelot and Charles Ruelle, Collection des anciens
alchimistes grecs, 3 vols. (Paris: Steinheil, 1887–88); and
H.G.Sheppard, “The Ouroboros and the Unity of Matter in
Alchemy: A Study in Origins,” Ambix 10 no. 1 (1962):83–96. An
ouroboros is illustrated in Thoeodoros Pelecanos, Synosius [1478],
Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. grec 2327, fol. 297, reproduced in
Count Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Alchemy, The Secret Art
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), pl. 1.
12. Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens (Oppenheim: Hieronymous Galler,
1617), emblem XIV. Translation modified from Atalanta Fugiens,
An Edition of the Fugues, Emblems and Epigrams, edited by Jocelyn
Godwin (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1989), 12.9. There is no full,
reliable English translation. See the MS translations in the British
Library, MS Sloane 3645, and at Yale, Mellon MS 48.
13. Clangor buccinae, in Artis auriferœ, quam chemiam vacant, 2 vols.
(Basel: Conrad Waldkirch, 1572), vol. 1, p. 530, cited in Helena
Maria Elisabeth de Jong, Atalanta Fugiens: Sources of an Alchemical
Book of Emblems (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1969), 131–32.
14. Senioris Zadith, Filii Hamuelis, Tabula chimica, in Theatrum
chemicum, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 233, also cited in de Jong, Atalanta
Fugiens, op. cit., 132.
15. Gottlieb’s pictographs are studied in my Domain of Images: The Art
Historical Study of Visual Artifacts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
forthcoming).
16. It depicts the boat from which Jesus’s disciples caught fish, as
described in John 2.1:4–9. The boat tips because the fish were