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

58 HOW TO COUNT IN OIL AND STONE
“three hypostatical principles” (principia-, in Arabic, arkān) of
body, soul, and spirit, bringing them perilously close to the
Christian Trinity. Other alchemists found ways of squeezing the
four Greek elements of water, air, fire, and earth, so they would
fit the new Trinity. As in all number symbolism, schemata were
trimmed as best they could be to match the new regime: 27
The rearrangements and substitutions among the triads produce
an almost uncontrollable plethora of meanings, and alchemists
never stopped rearranging them. 28 The triad has a burgeoning
usefulness, as opposed to the empty monad and the irresolute
dyad. Once there are three, there is structure: there can be
pictorial compositions made of triangles, families made of more
than just husband and wife, Christian theologies, and whole
natural histories, each more interesting than the simple dichotomy
of opposites.
In post-Renaissance alchemy substances were often thought to
be made of sulfur, mercury, and salt, or of the three principles
together with the metals copper, iron, tin, lead, and gold. The
Renaissance alchemist called Basil Valentine classifies gemstones
this way: diamond, he says, is made of “fixed coagulated
mercury,” while rock crystal is only made of ordinary mercury
(Mercurio vulgi). Ruby is composed of the “tincture of mars”
(Tinctura Martis) or “sulfur of iron,” emerald is the sulfur of
Venus, granite the “soul of Saturn” (Anima Saturni), and sapphire
is composed of sulfur and the “tincture of the moon” (Tinctur
Lunœ). 29 These are all beautiful ways of thinking about
gemstones, and they have their share of truth. Leonhardt
Thurneysser von Thurn, a disciple of Paracelsus, wrote a
monstrously long treatise classifying varieties of parsley and