How to Cite
Purš, Ivo: The "spiritus rector" and the Artistic Inventor: Maier’s and Merian’s images for the "Atalanta fugiens", in Wagner, Berit and Gannon, Corinna (Eds.): Opus magnum: Matthäus Merian d.Ä. und die Bebilderung der Alchemie, Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net-ART-Books, 2024, p. 161–198. https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1311.c19538
License (Chapter)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Identifiers (Book)
ISBN 978-3-98501-245-9 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-98501-246-6 (Hardcover)
Published
05/08/2024
The "spiritus rector" and the Artistic Inventor
Maier’s and Merian’s images for the "Atalanta fugiens"
Michael Maier's book of emblems Atalanta fugiens (1617, 1618) is one of the most important works of alchemical literature from the early 17th century. Its concept of a ‘multimedia‘ combination of poetry, music, imagery and commentary followed the earlier tradition of alchemical picture poems. Maier realized it after he had become acquainted with the engraver Matthäus Merian the Elder who could execute the depictions at a high artistic level. In close collaboration with Maier, he was able to imprint his artistic style on a variety of earlier alchemical motifs und thus created an iconographically compact and unified series of images.
