How to Cite
License (Chapter)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Identifiers (Book)
Published
Erste Seite - Novität oder Normalität
Bemerkungen zur Eingangsgestaltung bei Merians Alchemica
Then as now, the cover or the first page play a decisive role in conveying an impression of a treatise. The tradition of covers for alchemical books goes back to the time of incunabula. Around 1500, the main focus was on how-to-tracts on distillation and metallurgy. Symbolic and allegorical alchemy, on the other hand, had not yet found expression in the printed medium in the first half of the 16th century. And even in the decades that followed, this potential was only sporadically called up visually. All the more striking and in need of explanation are the books published in this sector in Frankfurt am Main and Oppenheim between 1615 and 1625. Using the example of Alchemica illustrated by Matthäus Merian the Elder, this article raises the question of how new or conventional this allegorical and symbolic imagery on the first page was. At the same time, the emigrant status and confessional self-image of the bookmakers will be addressed.
