 Adam's Art weblog Adam McLean is one of the few recognised experts on hermetic, emblematic and alchemical symbolism. Since 1978 he has published over 50 books on hermeticism, alchemy and related matters, edited the long running Hermetic Journal in the 1980's, and now organises the largest and most comprehensive web site on alchemy. He also offers study courses on the interpretation of alchemical symbolism. He also has one of the largest collections of modern tarot decks and is very interested in the artwork of modern tarot. As an artist he is not one given up to exploring in a free or indulgent way his own ideas, but instead he works essentially to restore and invigorate traditional emblematic and alchemical imagery. In March 2008 he decided to create this occasional weblog dealing with his artistic interests and research, his ongoing projects, his enthusiasms for traditional emblematic allegorical works and criticisms of some of the more risible aspects of modern art. View Adam's art prints. 27 January 2010 For a bit of a break from the task of making up my latest tarot deck, I decided to have a go at colouring Durer's Melencolia engraving of 1514. It proved to be a more challenging task than I originally thought, and I spend much more time thinking about how to colour the various components in the image than actually on the task of painting. The problems of colouring lie in trying to keep to some naturalistic style and resist the temptation to colour a component in some artificial way, but at the same time separate the forms which can get muddled up by the saturation of the engraved lines. In a week or so I will return to it and make some adjustments, then I will put it up on my art prints site.  25 January 2010 A few years ago I came across a painting by the unidentified Master of Cassoni Campana. This painting now at the Musee du Petit-Palais in Avignon presents the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. I was very attracted by the image of the Labyrinth as a kind of walled garden. This painting was made between 1510 and 1520.  A week or so ago while looking through a book of 15th Century Italian engravings I discovered a Florentine engraving on the same theme from half a century earlier - 1460-70. I suspect the later painter had seen this engraving or a work copying it, as his imagery for the Cretan Labyrinth is so similar. A few days ago I finished making a coloured version of the Italian engraving. At one time I had considered making a facsimile painting of the version by the Master of Cassoni Campana, but I am happy for now with colouring the earlier engraving. It will make quite a nice large format print, so I will add it to my prints site next time I update it.  31 December 2009 As a bit of a break from the Temptation of St Anthony paintings, on which I am working at present, I have in the last few days began work on a painting I have admired for years because of its amazing depiction of a complex three dimensional polyhedron. This painting by the Italian Jacopo de'Barbari (ca.1440-1515), now in the Palace of Capodimonte in Naples, entitled A Portrait of Luca Pacioli, was made in 1495. The painting of the polyhedron always fascinated me. It is a rhombicuboctahedron, an Archimedean solid with eight triangular and eighteen square faces, here it appears to be made of glass and also half filled with water. The figure in this painting is the Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli (1445 - 1514) who had a great interest in geometry and wrote some books on the subject. I am amazed at the painting of the polyhedron which needed a deep understanding of perspective as well as reflection in the transparent medium. Some historians suppose that Barbari enlisted the help of Leonardo da Vinci. Certainly Leonardo had mastered the drawing of polyhedra. Some others even suggest that Barbari had access to a glass model of the rhombicuboctahedron to use as a model when making his painting. I cannot quite believe this. It would challenge a craftsman today with modern materials (epoxy resin glues especially) and equipment to make such a model. I have only just roughed in the forms, though I spent a lot of time on the rhombicuboctahedron. Apart from the problem of the colouring of the different layers of glass, Barbari also includes the reflection of a window, which is internally reflected three times. My copy is now about a third finished as there is much detail needed to the objects on the table, and in modelling the forms, and making them integrate with their backgrounds. Those who know this painting will immediately realise that I have chosen not to include the figure of a young man in court dress who stands on the right watching rather superciliously or disdainfully (to my mind at least) over the shoulder of our friar. This figure troubles me. He stands a bit back behind the friar yet overlooks him. The lighting of his hands and arm is strange as this should be within the shadow of the friar. I find him an intrusive figure and much prefer to paint the scene without including him. 
28 December 2009 I just discovered that one of the Temptation of St Anthony paintings by Jan Wellens de Cock (ca.1480-1527) has been through a bit of an adventure. It had been stolen together with numerous other works of art from the National Museum in Warsaw by the Nazi authorities in November 1939. In January 2007 the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow came into possession of a bequest from a private person, which included, among other objects, the looted Temptation of St. Anthony painting by Jan Wellens de Cock. Happily the painting, though looted, appears to have been well cared for, and is now returned from the shadows to be seen openly again. 
This is, obviously, related to the painting in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 
27 December 2009 Over the last few years I have often felt a bit insulted when someone compared the kind of facsimile painting that I undertake to the rubbish churned out from China often described as 'Museum quality hand painted oil painting reproductions'. These people usually show scans of the original paintings rather than their painted copies, as these would be of such low quality that few people would be stupid enough to buy them, however, some of their customers, obviously unhappy with the painting they received, try to sell them on Ebay and then they have to show a photograph of the painting they received from China. I was rather amused today to find that some of these suppliers of 'Museum quality hand painted oil painting reproductions' are now offering to give their wonderful creations a craquelure (that is, give them the fine network of cracks seen on old paintings). Who on earth would want this? I recently finished painting the wonderful Mary Magdelene by Rogier van der Weyden. This painting was much damaged by craquelure, especially in the white pigment, and the face. It was a delight to be able to paint a copy close to how the original would have looked when Rogier van der Weyden painted it and not some centuries later when the paint layers had shrunk and produced craquelure. What would be the point of then artificially adding craquelure? I can only suppose it is to cover up the poor quality of the painting. 21 December 2009 I finally finished my coloured version of the Jacques Callot second version of the Temptation of St Anthony. I scanned it at high resolution and printed out a copy. It printed quite well so I will make it available for sale on my Emblematic Art site. 
15 December 2009 I recently found this artistic statement by the surrealist artist Manfred von Pentz. It is well worth looking at his work on his web site www.manfredvonpentz.com At a time when the Fine Arts have been debased and nearly destroyed by clever barbarians who invented a faeces culture that proclaims mindless splashes of colour, soiled bedsteads or vagina-plastered Madonnas as art, this painter has joined the small band of artists who quietly fan the brightest of all flames: our marvellous, never surpassed Christian-European inheritance. In other words, he tries to produce figurative and metaphoric canvasses that would have effected a nod, no matter how faint, from his forebears, the incomparable Great Masters. 15 December 2009 Somehow I managed to find some rather attractive antiqued gold frames for the series of oil painted facsimile paintings I made of the Bonacina series of ten alchemical images. The paintings are quite small, 7 by 5 inches (177 by 127mm), but they look rather fine when individually framed in this way. I would only consider selling them as a complete set. When hung together in a close array they occupy 38 by 20 inches (950 by 510 mm) of wall space. I will now have to think about setting a price. The ten detailed paintings each took quite a number of hours to complete. 
13 December 2009 Tonight I found that an 18th century oil painted facsimile of the Jacques Callot engraving of the Temptation of St Anthony had been sold in June this year at an art auction at Christies. It is quite a large painting on canvas and the greater intensity of the oil pigments create wonderfully atmospheric effects - one can almost smell the smoke. It sold for 49000 Euros ($68,000). 
13 December 2009 Over the last year I have become increasing engaged by the depiction by artists of the Temptation of St Anthony. The ways in which the treatment of this theme changed over the centuries, reflects changes in the nature of cultural and religious ideas in European society. It is a fascinating study, at least to me, though I do not seem to have enthused many others with the importance of this theme. I have begun creating a graphical database of all the known artworks on this theme. At the moment I have information about 200 items but am now trying to gather these together systematically. I spent a few days on this already and have been able to enter about forty items. It will take many months before I have anything approaching an exhaustive database. A few days ago, while searching through a pile of my papers, I came across the well known Martin Schongauer engraving, which I had begun colouring about two years ago but must have put to one side. So I set to work this weekend and finished the colouring. It is a remarkable piece. This image created between 1470 and 1475 predates the imagery of Hieronymous Bosch by a decade or so.  7 December 2009 The last few days I have been working on colouring a single engraving. This is the amazing second version of the Temptation of St Anthony by the seventeenth century engraver Jacques Callot. It has absorbed about twenty hours of my time so far, and I estimate I must devote about another twenty hours to bring it to completion. I have coloured most of the forms, but now must work on some of the small details and merge the colours in adjacent areas where they contrast too much against each other. Also I have to darken some of the colouring. One has to be tentative with watercolours as there is no way to correct errors, so it is best always to make the colouring less saturated and revisit it later to darken it a trifle. I always aim for a naturalistic and subtle colouring that respects the original artwork. This has been quite a challenge. The image is large, about 360 by 460mm, and already looks quite striking. I will temporarily mount it on my wall so I can just look at it occasionally to see how to solve some of the remaining problems with the colouring. I will let it rest a few days and hopefully return to it later in this week. Anyway here is the rough version which will be improved upon later. This image was taken with a digital camera, and it is consequently difficult to get the colours right with the low colour temperature of indoor lighting. When it is finished I will scan it in sections on my A3 scanner and patch the image together. Of course, many people think me quite mad to do such things, but I aim to make these amazing neglected artworks more approachable to the modern eye. I have so very often tried to enthuse people with the wonders of an old engraving, only to be met with a blank look. How exhausted the modern eye has become, not to be able to see the value in these old engravings. 
2 December 2009 Further on the drolatiques, I remembered that Salvador Dali had created a set of drawings based on these images. This was one of Dali's later productions, dated to 1973, and his drawings were issued as lithographs (in two sets, one of which was rather crudely coloured). Dali, of course, elaborates on the image, often almost burying it in accretions of his ideosyncratic imagery, often revealing his sexual obsessions. In this example, he takes up the funnel like image and works it into an elephant form, which seems to me a bit trite. Although it is interesting that Dali chose to rework wthese images, I much prefer the spare simplicity of the originals  
2 December 2009 I recently managed to get access to some high quality images of the complete set of one hundred and twenty drolatiques, the wonderful parade of grotesque comic characters associated with the Pantagruel of Rabelais. These woodcuts were printed in a book of 1565 Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, and are considered to be by a Parisian engraver named François Desprez. The imagery echoes Bosch and Brueghel and also draws on the tradition of incorporating such grotesques or drolleries as decoration in medieval manuscripts. I had great fun this morning colouring a few of the items. I hope to colour the complete series over the next few months.    
1 December 2009 I have now framed up some of my coloured images of the Temptation of St Anthony and related themes. Eventually I hope to be able to have an exhibition on this topic, perhaps in a year or so. 
30 November 2009 I continue to push on with the Temptation of St Anthony series. I have now completed colouring another engraving, this one being engraved after a painting by Marten de Vos, the late sixteenth century Antwerp painter. I have not been able to see the original painting. There is another better known painting on the same theme by Marten de Vos. This one includes the temptation or teasing of the demon musicians. 
26 November 2009 This morning I finished mounting and framing up the Brueghel Seven Deadly Sins series which I had handcoloured during the course of this year. They look rather fine in their frames. I hope to incorporate these into an exhibition over the next year or so, then I would be willing to sell these. 
22 November 2009 Over the last month I have had to devote much of my time to other publishing projects so have not been able to do any painting. I managed to find time this weekend to finish off my coloured versuion of the Brueghel Patience engraving. I have now bought a set of frames for the Brueghel Sins series which I hope to exhibit next year. These should arrive next week. 
14 October 2009 The Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern Gallery in London has just installed a conceptual art piece at the considerable expense of Unilever PLC. It consists of a large light free container which the art enthusiast can step into. They immediately cannot see anything. The idea of this art piece is to provide the absence of any visual material. Art is nothingness, art is a black hole, dark energy, so many ideas seem quickly to come to mind. It is one step up (or is it down) from the Turner prize winning piece from a few years ago which presented an empty gallery in darkness and a light switch. Well, I have a confession to make. I actually have one of these black hole pieces in my apartment. I call it "My Hall". It has no windows and if all the doors opening into it are closed, then I find myself entering into a similar dark space. This saves me the expense of time and money of traveling to the South bank of the Thames to see this wonder of modern art. Amusingly, for me but not for those keen to see this piece, it had only been open a few hours when it claimed its first casualty. A visitor was injured in the pitch-black art installation when he walked into a wall he could not see. Now I sympathise with this art enthusiast, as I once stubbed my toe on a heavy box, when stupidly crossing "My Hall" in darkness. Now I always put on the light. At least I learnt something from my art installation. 7 October 2009 A few days ago I received an email from someone I didn't already know which began: "I was just looking through an art web site and came across your Gallery. Hope you are good today ? I am presently converting my Home to a guest house for Commercial purpose and would like to have some of your Renown works in the rooms of the Guest House. I tried to search for your detailed website so I can select some art works but could not get any web page that would assist me. Kindly make a selection of some of your works for 10 rooms in the Apartment so We can discuss and make payment."It seemed as if I was going to get a nice order. The next email from him seemed equally positive: "Granting you the liberty to make the choice and selection for me will me my wish. Kindly make the selection of the works bearing in mind my budget is $3,000 - $4,500 for the total amount of the works. I am going to make payment via credit card."At this point I put his name into Google and found a website for a entrepreneur and property developer with this name. So I felt quite confident that I would get a substantial order for my prints. Today I received a rather strange email from him confirming the order which alerted me to the fact that something strange was going on. "The works would be shipped to Seattle, WA. I booked the services of a wood agent and he is unable to process a credit card payment for $4,000.00. So when you get the card details you charge and deduct the amount of $6,000 from the card details."This time I put his email address into Google and this led me to a number of artists and bulletin boards on Internet fraud. Apparently this is a regular scam that this person has been using for a few years. He exploits artists using the hook of placing a large order, then asking you to charge his card for $4,000 extra dollars, and as a favour pay this to a tradesman involved in developing the "guest house" (who does not appear to have a credit card) that he owes money to. Of course, the credit card you charge will belong to some innocent person, who will not know about the transaction for a month or so until they get their statement. Then they will inform their credit card company about the fruadulent charge and they will cancel the payment. This will take up to six weeks, and by then you could well have paid the $4,000 extra and sent off your artwork. I doubt whether this individual has any interest in the artwork, and you are probably sending it to a non-existent address. Happily, being an older person and no longer easily flattered, I was able to see through the scam, but sadly some younger artists may be more gullible. This parasite obviously preys on artists.  23 September 2009 Here is the Lucas Cranach woodcut of the Temptation of St Anthony, 1506, which I almost finished colouring last weekend. It still need a little bit more work on some details in the foreground. 
21 September 2009 A couple of people have asked me about the strange bright red backgrounds to the Aurora consurgens illustrations. These, I believe, were the grounds for diaper work that was not actually undertaken. It was usual that medieval manuscripts were created by a number of different artisans, limners, scribes, painters, and often a final stage when it was passed to a specialist to create the diaper patterns, small decorative elements set in a square or diagonal grid of lozenges. Often these had applied gold leaf. Here is an example of such diaper work in a manuscript of some works of Bartholomaeus Anglicus. 
There is a rather fine article on diaper patterns in medieval manuscripts at www.jehannesjewels.com/3.6Diaper_Patterns.pdf 10 September 2009 I have almost completed creating a corrected copy of another image from the Aurora consurgens manuscript. It still requires a little more tweaking and cleaning up. One of the interesting aspects of this well known image is that it has been described as a battle between the Light Sun and the Black Sun. The Black Sun does appear in a very few alchemical works - the Ripley Scroll, the Kelly 'Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy' and in an image in Mylius' Philosophia reformata - but is not mentioned in the Aurora consurgens. Instead the black headed 'Sun' is an artefact, well known to anyone familiar with medieval manuscripts. Illuminated manuscripts often had gold and silver leaf applied to parts of images. This was laid onto a cushion of gum and then burnished to a high gloss. Now gold does not tarnish as it is chemically inert, but silver on the other hand is attacked by sulphur oxides or hydrogen sulphide in the air and develops a black patina. This blackening has been interpreted by some people, unaware of this aspect of silver leaf in manuscripts, as an intention of the artist and writer. Sadly, I have on a few occasions had to disillusion people about this 'Black Sun'. They are usually unhappy about this and in a few cases even thought me to be foolishly mistaken. The 'Black Sun' image is one that Jungians and other esotericists are strongly drawn to and thus invest their belief in. They are often not very amenable to having their 'Black Sun' taken away from them - but truth remains truth, however much one wishes to believe in a contrary viewpoint. This image instead is about the opposition of Sun and Moon as is seen in the section of text in the Aurora consurgens which this image serves to illustrate.  
6 September 2009 I have spent about a day and a half correcting two images from the Aurora consurgens. Working on very high resolution images I pasted small patches of colour onto areas of the image from which the pigment had been lost, and using some other methods of redrawing the imagery. Rather painstaking work. Some images from the original manuscript suffered at the hands of a vandal who was so offended by sexual imagery that he felt impelled to scratch out and damage areas of images that offended him. The hermaphrodite image, the first in the manuscript, was damaged in this way but I have been able to see to some extent through the scratchings out and restore it a bit closer to the artist's original intention. These restored images will be printed in my forthcoming edition of the work.  
4 September 2009 Over the last few weeks I have had to divert all my creative energy and time away from painting in order to work on an edition of the Aurora consurgens an early alchemcial manuscript, which is thought to date from the late 14th century or early 15th at the latest. It is an important alchemical work and contains a series of twenty six emblematic images, which are among the earliest alchemical emblems created. The manuscript was created in the same way as a illuminated manuscript of that period. The Aurora consurgens is much misunderstood due to an incomplete and agenda driven publication made in the 1960's which has overshadowed it ever since. It is my intention to issue the work (in translation) in its original form so that people can appreciate fully what its author intended. 23 August 2009 I have had to divert much of my time over the last few weeks away from painting in order to work on other projects, especially a new book in the Magnum Opus series. However, I did manage to complete the colouring of an engraving by Hieronymous Cock made in the mid-16th century after a drawing by Bosch. I am now working on colouring the wonderful woodcut by Cranach. 
30 July 2009 I have made some progress on the next painting for the Temptation of St Anthony project. This is by Joos van Craesbeeck (born around 1605 – died between 1654–1662) a Flemish Baroque painter who specialized in tavern interiors and rustic peasant scenes, somewhat in the style of David Teniers. He also took to painting 'tronies' or paintings focussing on human heads often with outlandish garb or fantastic situations. They were not portraits as such, but rather the artist was using the head to make some particular statement. One of the best known nowadays is Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Craesbeeck's work is full of fun, and when he turned to painting a Temptation of St Anthony, he certainly provided us with a riot of humour. That is what drew me especially to this work. The head washed up on the shore of a lake or ocean, with people living inside its mouth and in its skull, is directly taken from one of Bosch's images engraved by Hieronymus Cock in 1556 which I posted on here a few weeks ago. St Anthony is marginalised by Craesbeeck by being seated under a tree and seems only a little discomforted by the close presence of a peasant woman temptress, while around him a chaotic cavalcade of strange creatures takes an interest in the still living head washed up on the shore. I am really enjoying painting this one. Over the last week I have established the forms and now have to work on the detail and modelling. I have painted this quite light, so it might appear a bit gaudy at this stage, however, this is intentional as I will gradually darken the forms with layers of earth colours. There will now be much use of umbers and the transparent siennas and the wonderful Vandyke brown, to give modelling and to blend the colours. This I can easily do as I use alkyd oils which dry very quickly, even becoming touch dry within the day, and can be overpainted the next day without lifting or smearing the underlying layer. 
20 July 2009 I have recently embarked on a major painting project. I intend to create a series of facsimile paintings of key early paintings on the theme of the 'Temptation of St Anthony'. This will be the basis for an exhibition, in a year or two, documenting the evolution of the imagery in this important though entirely neglected backwater of European art. This group of paintings to some extent shows the struggles within Christianity as it moved from a medieval view to a more modern one, as well as the upheaveal of the Protestant revolution. I hope to make about twenty oil paintings and another twenty or more coloured engravings and woodcuts, together with some material which helps contextualise the theme. I would welcome some financial assistance with this exhibition, either direct funding, or through purchasing paintings in advance. I have already invested £1000 ($1700) in research and obtaining high quality photographs of paintings from which to work. There will be considerable costs in framing and preparing a catalogue for the exhibition. I have now almost completed the first painting. It still needs a little bit of work on some details, or areas that could be improved by darkening or lightening a little. This is by the almost unknown Flemish painter Pieter Huys (c. 1519 – c. 1581). I find this work most engaging. He draws on some of Hieronymous Bosch's imagery but reworks it into a more gentle and delightful conception.  
19 July 2009 Over the weekend I finished colouring an engraving by Brueghel entitled St. James and the Magician Hermogenes which dates to 1556. This is one of those artworks from the 16th century that I am interested in as part of the context of the Temptations of St Anthony. The theme of this engraving is the legend of the meeting of St James and the magician Hermogenes. St James stands just left of the centre while Hermogenes is seated on the far left reading his magical book and surrounded by demons, while in the air above witches fly around on broomsticks. In the legend St James converted and baptised the magician, after each had tested his shown his powers to the other. It is a Christian allegory of the triumph of the spiritual power of Christianity over pagan magic. The witch imagery is to a great extent taken from woodcuts and paintings by Hans Baldung Grien (c. 1480 - 1545) one of Durer's most gifted students. 
Hieronymus Bosch also apparently created a panel on the theme of St. James and the Magician Hermogenes. Compared with the riot and energy of Brueghel work, his piece is somewhat more spare and simple. 
13 July 2009 Another interesting image related to the Temptation of St Anthony is an engraving by Daniel Hopfer (1500-1550) with the theme of three old women attarcking a demon. 
13 July 2009 Over the weekend I managed to finish colouring the engraving of the Temptation of St Anthony issued by Hieronymus Cock in 1556.  7 July 2009 I have now embarked on a major painting project. I have now collected images of about thirty 15th, 16th and 17th century paintings on the theme of the Temptation of St Anthony. I intend now to make facsimile paintings of twelve to fifteen of these over the next year or so. Hopefully this will lead to a exhibition on this theme. I have now made a start on a painting by Pieter Huys from 1547.  25 June 2009 Today, while researching the Temptation of St Anthony theme in painting, I came across a painting based on the well known woodcut of Martin Schoengauer (c. 1448–1491) which has recently been purchased by the Kimbell Gallery in Fort Worth and provisionally assigned as a youthful work of Michelangelo (even possibly his earliest surviving painting). The painting is on a wooden panel some 18 inches tall. Some scholars are now convinced that Michelangelo Buonarotti completed it in 1487-88 — when he was 12 or 13 years old. It is shortly to go on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where it has been cleaned and restored. It will no doubt take some years before a consensus arises between the scholars as to the veracity of the ascription.  
22 June 2009 A few days ago I discovered a painting, the Donna Nuda, in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. On its website it is described as by an unknown late 16th century painter. After a bit of research found that it is more than likely a painting by Andrea Salai (c.1480-c.1524) who also went under the name of Gian Giacomo Capprotti. Obviously what intrigued me is that it is a version of the Mona Lisa, by one of his pupils Salai. Some people have titled this the Monna Vanna. It depicts the Giaconda with her hair in ringlets and naked to the waist. The cartoon for this painting is still preserved in the Musee Conde in Chantilly, France and is dated to 1515. I am not entirely sure what to make of it. It was included in an exhibition in Milan in 2001, when the curator said “I am convinced that the portrait was painted by Salai from an idea by Leonardo, who was having fun with the famous image he had created ten years before.” By happenstance, a few days ago The Telegraph reported that a new exhibition on Leonardo has opened at the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, near Florence, where Leonardo was born in 1452. Part of this exhibition includes another naked Mona Lisa, which was only recently discovered hidden for nearly a century inside the walls of the private library of Cardinal Joseph Fesch, Napoleon's ambassador to the Vatican. Apparently there are a number of naked Mona Lisa paintings emerging from the circles of pupils and assistants of Leonardo.   
19 June 2009 As an artist at age 61 I can get a bit paranoid about my eyesight. I was totally astounded and yet rather amused by an email publicity leaflet I received today promoting some weird project and the author's latest book. Thus, the novel and provocative main thesis of this project is: eye floaters are the first appearances of a shining structure of consciousness within which we cover a distance to our spiritual origin. We can see and experience this way. As an object of concentration and meditation, these dots and strands are therefore a significant key to our consciousness development.The publicity seems to be making out that floaters in the eye are a positive thing for us, as they open us up to some expansion of consciousness. He even shows images of artworks which he seems to be claiming as inspired or influenced by floaters. This is just so much nonsense! What a sad person to believe this. A friend of mine last year experienced for a few weeks the frightening appearance of floaters which formed a bar across her central vision in her dominant eye. There was no positive development in her consciousness, merely a fear of failing sight. She found it difficult to read music. She had to go to hospital to have the situation investigated. Floaters can be the consequence of a tear or detachment of the retina which can lead to blindness - hardly contributing towards a positive development of consciousness. What a buffoon this person is to try and make out that this is a positive phenomenon. If I had significant floaters in my visual field I would be immediately making an apppointment with the eye hospital. How people can deceive themselves so greatly nowadays. A "provocative thesis" indeed, but also a stupid and risible one. How exactly this person hopes to exploit people suffering this condition I do not know, but if he delays people from seeking proper medical attention and diagnosis he may be responsible for them losing their sight. How can anyone be so self-deceptive and stupid ? The world often seems full of weird people. 18 June 2009 I have just had to spend over £600 ($1000) on some art reference books. These are on a number of themes, early Flemish paintings, and some source material on the Temptation of St Anthony paintings. I recently found a painting on this theme by Jan Mandyn (or Mandijn), a rather obscure 16th century Dutch painter. Mandyn painted at least two Temptations of St Anthony. One is well known but the other was only brought out before the public when it was sold at Christies in London four years ago. Sadly I can find very little about this artist. No one appears to have written a book about his life and works. 
I also needed some reference material on Freemasonic imagery and symbolism, as I am at the moment working on a series of paintings of the strange masonic tracing boards. I have decided to try and mount an exhibition on Freemasonry as Art. The earliest this could be done would be next year as there would be a great deal of material to prepare for this. It is an area that few have explored, so I am quite at home ! 17 June 2009 My ultrasonic cleaning system has been a considerable success, both cutting down the brush cleaning time and also extending the life of the brushes, as only 10 seconds or so in the ultrasonic bath removes pigment and medium from deep down in the fibres and from the ferule. One has to hunt around a bit in the bath for the best point where the ultrasonic energy is focussed. This moves around but when the brush is in the correct place, you can see all the pigment flowing away from the brush, and this without grounding the point or damaging it by vigorous shaking and hitting the side of the vessel. It is so easy to use. I must say I do hate the sun. Most artists love working in natural light, but I find it changes so much that every time I come back to work on a painting, the colours as perceived have changed. Instead, I work in a darkened room with the curtains closed, and use powerful floodlights. I now use metal halide floodlights. These are relatively efficient. I used to use some quartz halide floodlight (two 500 watt lamps) and the heat given off by these was fierce. It is impossible to work under these in the summer. These were also of a low colour temperature - not as low as tungsten filaments of course, but around about 2500 degrees Kelvin. I now use two metal halide floodlight, one with very high colour temp 4500º K which is quite blue and another warm daylight rated at about 3600º K, so the two produce a good even and not too harsh illumination. This means that, at any time of the day, whatever the weather, or cloud cover, I can work on a painting under the same light as I had left it. 16 June 2009 I have almost finished the Altdorfer painting. It just needs some tightening up of some background details here and there, which I will do gradually over the next few weeks. It has taken just over three weeks work. Now I am going to move on to making some paintings of Masonic tracing boards - a rather different type of painting! I realised that I first mentioned these in the weblog on 30th March 2008. I was, at that time, hoping to start work on these, but it has taken over a year for me to find the time to work on the project. Although the tracing boards do not have the modelling and detail of 15th century panel paintings, I have decided to paint these quite small (about 15 by 10 inches), thus the individual symbols become quite detailed and require fine brushes. These should be quite stunning when finished. 14 June 2009 In my entry for 25th May I mentioned that one of Altdorfer's green pigments has proven fugitive and shifted towards brown and that this also was the case with the Flemish Love spell painting. I have discovered that this could well be the copper resinate problem. This arose when green copper salts, such as verdigris, were mixed with tree resins. The chemical formula is Cu(C19H29COO)2 This was used during the late 15th century and throughout the 16th century and but after a century or so artists began to notice the instability of the colour as the green transformed into a muddy brown. There is an informative web site on pigments through the ages. This pigment, or something chemically close to it, seems to have been, because of its transparency, used as glaze layers when painting leaves and foliage. One of the best examples of this fading must be Pollaiuolo's Apollo and Daphne (late 15th century) where the greens on the tree hands of Daphne and the background vegetation have entirely turned brown. Some art historians were misled by these colours and saw such paintings as being intended to be brown. Thus they ascribed a brooding autumnal melancholy to the artwork which is not what the artist originally intended. One day I may try my hand at painting a facsimile of the Apollo and Daphne with bright green foliage. 
11 June 2009 I just discovered this rather interesting painting by Bernardo Parentino (1434 - 1531). Most of his output seems rather conventional but his Temptation of St. Anthony is quite wonderful. The Temptation of St Anthony is a fascinating theme in 15th and 16th century art. When I have time I will try to systematically collect images of paintings on this theme. I have over 90 so far, early and modern. It is remarkable that this theme still engages artists today. 
9 June 2009 I received a rather amusing email today. Not that the author intended to amuse. He was pointing out to me that it was pointless my making facsimiles of these old paintings that I love, as you can easily buy them from China for less than $200 and that if I wanted facsimile paintings I should just buy them from there as other people do. Indeed he even saw a copy of the Altdorfer on one website, which was what occasioned him to write to me. There are large companies in China who will have people paint you a copy of a painting in a day or so on an unstretched canvas then send it to you rolled in a tube within a week or two. These cannot be done in oils as you could not roll this up after a few days. So they are probably made in acrylic, or using some mechanical printing process, such as giclee. The quality of these is very poor. At best they are impressions of a painting. I saw an interesting documentary last year which showed a Chinese "artist" making copies of the Van Gogh Sunflowers. He had about fifty bits of canvas pinned on a long wall and went from one to another, painting the same colour and section. An assistant kept handing him brushes filled with colour, so he did not even have to dip and charge his brush as he went from one painting to another. It was hilarious - a human photocopier in action. And people actually pay $200 for these ! The words "China" and "quality" do not sit easily together. Often their products seem merely made to look like an established item without the quality or functionality. I have long since given up buying Chinese light bulbs and spotlamps, as these merely last a few days. Yesterday, I got rather frustrated when cutting up some thick cardboard boxes. The knife kept sticking and tearing rather than cutting, despite me inserting a new blade. I took a look at the packet, and there was the terrible phrase "made in China". They cannot even make Stanley Blades (box-cutter blades for US readers). They must use rubbish steel that quickly blunts. So this correspondent who was trying to get me to give up my painting may have been well-intentioned but sadly too trusting in the quality of Chinese craftsmanship. It just takes hours and hours to work the detail, and access to a large sized image from which to make the copy. One cannot make anything except a poor impression by copying from a postcard-sized image. If one looks carefully at the images shown on these Chinese art production sites, one immediately notices that they do not show their paintings but instead photographs of the original paintings. This should warn the unwary. They also use the term "museum quality". Now I wonder which museums would hang one of these. My paintings are not impressions, but facsimilies. They look like the originals, indeed the naive eye would not be able to tell the difference, though, of course, anyone who has experience of looking at paintings, would immediately see that these were painted recently using modern materials and a simple imitative technique. In any case you cannot really paint detailed paintings on canvas, as the weave causes problems with small brushes. That is why, some years ago, I switched to painting on board. It gives a flat surface for the paint. I was amused by this correspondents remarks, but it is sad that he thinks to lump me alongside Chinese fast art production. I think I can do a little bit better than that human photocopier. 7 June 2009 I often find the ways in which artists and critics try and explain their work today rather amusing. I just received a classic of this style. [The theme of this art exhibition] is the idea of externally perceptible behavioral patterns of a particular system, of a complex transitional space, or a non-space. In everyday language, the simplest model has advanced towards being a paradigm: through the reproducibility of sense perceptions, analogous to the black box of an airplane, an archive of memories and associations is constructed. It is a transistor, able to absorb and transform information... The three artists approach the subject as experimenters, thereby creating a system of tests in which events can be followed, but which also lends itself to substantiating different modus operandi. Oscillating between possible and impossible implementations, they transform notions of reality and illusion into a dimension of functional describability, while revealing the character of the exhibition space as an in-between place. The artists’ approach is closer to an unveiling than a usage of the space, marking less an attempt at organization than the activation of forms of behavior and conditions. The artistic media used in this range from photographs and drawings to installation and sound. Not least of all, the exhibition is marked by a moment of ignorance, in which none of the artists are aware of each other’s intentions and strategies.Oh well ! Back to creating the fine detail in the Altdorfer. I will leave "the activation of forms of behavior and conditions" and "transforming notions of reality and illusion into a dimension of functional describability" to these three artists. 28 May 2009 I have made considerable progress with the Altdorfer painting. After two full weeks of work (four or so hours a day) I have established all the forms quite well. Now all that remains is the detail. This painting is all about detail, detail, detail. So probably another two weeks work with the smallest brushes before I can call it complete. 
27 May 2009 I just bought an ultrasonic cleaner which I intend using for my brushes. One of the great problems with detailed oil painting is that you damage the brushes a little every time you clean them, either by shaking them in white spirit and inadvertently striking the point against the sides or bottom of the container, or by wiping them in a rag or household paper towel, which seems also to shorten their life considerably. It is annoying when some dark pigment stubbornly stays close to the ferule and emerges when one is later painting a thin light area. So I am now trying out this ultrasonic cleaner, which is actually intended for cleaning jewelry. It consists of a tank, which I fill deeply with white spirit. When one switches the device on, ultrasonic waves shake the liquid and all one need do is to hold the brush still in the liquid for about 10 to 20 seconds. I will see, over the next weeks, if it helps or is just another waste of money. 25 May 2009 Having succeeded with the love spell painting, I decided to work on an even more challenging item. I seem always curious to see what can be achieved through painting. So I have begun work on a wonderful painting by Albrecht Altdorfer (c.1480-1538), an important early German painter. This is a religious painting The Rest on the Flight from Egypt created in 1510 and now in the Staatliche Museum in Berlin. What attracted me to this work was not its religious content, but rather the amazing romantic landscape on the right and the ornamental fountain on the left. This painting is enormously detailed, and this detail is essential to the work, so it will take some time to complete. However, not as long as Albrecht Altdorfer took ! In his day, painters in oils had to wait long periods between applications of paint until the layer dried sufficiently for another to be painted on top. This still applies to those today who paint using conventional oil pigments and linseed or some other slow drying oil medium. Some years ago I switched to using alkyd based oils. These dry very quickly, so that the paint is dry by the next day and often even in a few hours. This means one can work on top of a layer the next day without stirring up the pigment in the layer below. Early paintings like this were created by using glazes or thin layers of paint, built one upon another. It must have taken early artists some months to work four or five layers, but I find it easy to do this now within a mere few days. Some of the Windor and Newton alkyd colours are transparent which makes the glazing of layers very easy. This applies to some of the earth colours, especially their Burnt Sienna, and Vandyke Brown, which I use a great deal in the modelling of forms. One of Altdorfer's green pigments has proven fugitive and shifted towards brown, so I will of course restore these areas. This also was the case with the Flemish Love spell painting. I must try and find out which green pigment from that period it is that does not survive the centuries. 
15 May 2009 A few years ago I began working on a facsimile of a 15th century Flemish painting of a young woman casting a love spell. This so challenged my technical abilities that I became increasingly frustrated and after a few months I abandoned this. I really love this painting so a few weeks ago I returned to this and decided to start work on a new version. This time it progressed well and I have now almost completed it. It now only requires a little bit more work on some of the small details. I will eventually put it up for sale, but for a year or so I would like just to have it on the wall of my apartment. 
5 May 2009 Some years ago I found an interesting engraving by the German artist Daniel Hopfer (1470-1536) entitled Christ triumphant. 
I only recently managed to obtain a high resolution image of this. I removed the German text and made a coloured version of this interesting emblem which is dated to 1530. 
2 May 2009 I reecently managed to finish my copy of the Mona Lisa. This was based on a later copy of Da Vinci's painting, which shows more detail in the background and her costume, than the original does now. I decided, in fact, to define these areas even more. I reinstated the veil, which has become invisible in the original, as it seems to have become lost in the surface dirt or possibly partly removed during earlier cleaning and revarnishing. When working on this I found that the enigmatic smile was not really created by her mouth and lips, but rather by the shading of her facial muscles. It proved frustrating to me to find that a minor adjustment, blending or smoothing this shading could so easily change her expression. Now I will have to find a suitable frame and give it a space on my wall. 
27 April 2009 Now that my exhibition on the Art of Japanese Tarot is out of the way, I have decided to try to find the time to return to a number of paintings I began last year but had to abandon due to other projects coming to the fore. The first one I want to finish is my copy of the Rogier van der Weyden Mary Magdalene. I had almost completed it, except for her elaborate hat and veil. So today I got out the whites and the various earth colours and began work again to complete it. This is a painting I do not expect I will ever sell, as it has taken up so many hours of my time that the price would be too high. Also, people just will not buy paintings based on viewing small jpgs on the internet. One really has to see the detail in my paintings up close in order to be prepared to pay a high sum to own them. Of course, I really like to have these paintings on the walls of my apartment. Over the next few years I hope to make a number of paintings based on 15th and early 16th century works. I feel very close to this period of art. It so delights the eye. 
21 April 2009 I recently discovered this rather wonderful emblem engraved by Zacharias Dolendo after Jacques de Gheyn. It is the final engraving in a series of nine produced in 1596/97, entitled Allen Dingen ist der Wechsel eigen (omnium rerum vicissitudo est) which I suppose roughly means "All things inherently change".  15 April 2009 I have now finished colouring Brueghel's Pride. I have some plans now to use this series of images in various ways.  7 April 2009 While researching images of the various Children of the Planets series I came across an interesting engraving. This is on the theme of the Battle of Ratio and Libido, and was made by the French engraver Nicolas Beatrizet (1515-1565) in 1545. It is, however, based on a drawing or painting by Baccio Bandinelli (ca. 1493-1560), best known as a sculptor, but also an accomplished draughtsman and painter. I would like to find a larger and higher quality image of this engraving.  5 April 2009 Last week I managed to get high quality images of the Hausbuch Meister's drawings of the Planetenkinder, and have managed to colour one of these, Luna. Over the next few months I will try to find time to work on the others, together with the Baldini. I may eventually put these into a book on the Children of the Planets.  31 March 2009 Last night I undertook a little research into the Children of the Planets emblems. A few days ago I had coloured one of the Baldini engravings of this series, so I wanted to gather together a little bit of information about the various versions of this emblem that appeared in the 15th and was still popular into the 16th century. I have set up a page on my new website devoted to emblematic art. This is still under development, but I thought I might give you a little preview of what I have been working on. 30 March 2009 Sunday (yesterday) was a painting day. The day before I had damaged my back and could not walk about much, so I decided to do some painting, which does not stress my lumbar vertebrae. So I looked onto the pile of images I had recently collected and found there a rather fine Adam and Eve woodcut from 1572 by Hans Weigel the Elder, based on an earlier work by the more famous Hans Sebald Beham. To me it looks even better when coloured.  29 March 2009 I managed to finish painting the Baldini image of Venus. This did not take as long as I had estimated, though this is the least complex of Baldini's planets series. It still needs a little bit of adjusting and reworking of some of the figures.  28 March 2009 Last night I spent a few hours scanning and correcting some images I recently managed to obtain of an amazing series of 15th century Italian engravings of the Children of the Planets series by Baccio Baldini (c. 1436 - 1487). I have known about these for some years but was never until recently been able to get access to high quality photographs of the imagery. The images needed a bit of correction as the backgrounds had some ink stains in white areas, which can happen with engravings. I now intend to colour these complex images. It will take quite a time as I estimate about twelve hours work on each of the seven images, so it will take a few months to complete the series, but they will look wonderful when completed. 27 March 2009 Today I began adding some further large format prints to my bookshop pages. I have been producing these giclee prints for over a year but the sales are extremely slow, which is rather disappointing, both because I would like to gain some sales and because people are missing out on having some of these wonderful images to contemplate. I, of course, am immersed in that material and so enthused by alchemical, astrological, and emblematic imagery that I find it difficult to understand why others would not also not wish to have such imagery. I do also produce standard format print at A4 size, but many images really become striking when available in the large format. Not all are suitable to be printed in the larger size but I have now added about 15 further images. It takes quite a time as the original paintings have to be rescanned at 1200 dpi in order to provide the best quality for printing. Anyway you can browse the items by clicking here. I have also reduced the prices to USA and Worldwide customers to reflect the recent currency fluctuations. 23 March 2009 Brueghel's Sloth.  19 March 2009 Here is Anger from Brueghel's Seven Deadly Sins series. I still have two left to colour. I take great delight in Brueghel's humour as well as his amazing technique and composition in his creation of little scenarios within the larger work.  19 March 2009 Yesterday I managed to find copies of the original drawings that Brueghel had made for the series of engravings on the Seven Deadly Sins which were issued by Hieronymous Cock. It is amazing that these drawings have survived, though they are distributed throughout European galleries, one being in The British Library, two in Paris, one in the King's Library in Brussels, another in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, with one in Basle and the final one in the Albertina in Vienna. Brueghel, being a total professional, had created his drawings in reverse, as the process of engraving, mirrors the image. Thus his figures were drawn as left-handed in order that they would appear correctly right-handed in the final prints. Here are some sections from the original drawing for Sloth with the final print. We can see how the engraver Pieter van der Heyden has faithfully reproduced the elements of Brueghel's drawing.   Here Brueghel remembered to reverse the clock! The figures in the lake below also in the final print are seen raising their right hands. Being able to visualise this mirroring in the creation of all the details in his drawings marks him out as a consummate professional.   18 March 2009 We are all familiar with work of the mid 20th century Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, especially his use of interlocking figures in black and white, figure and ground often being the same image inverted. We might be excused for seeing such images as a moderm invention. Today I found a woodcut by Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473-1531) which he designed in 1516 as his coat of arms. The interlocking bears on the shield are a wonderful device.  18 March 2009 Today I found a rather fine woodcut created within the school of Durer around about 1504. It is entitled Urania the muse of astronomy and astrology. As it was quite small and relatively simple, I spent some time this evening colouring the image.  15 March 2009 After a gap of a month, while I worked on my forthcoming exhibition on the Art of Japanese Tarot and also on some paintings for the Bonacina book, I managed to complete another of Brueghel's deadly sins. This is Invidia or envy. These are wonderful engravings full of humour and delightful images. When I complete the series I will probably issue them as a series of large format prints.  15 February 2009 At weekends I indulge in the seven deadly sins - well, perhaps only by proxy, as I try to find time to paint one of the amazing series of engravings by Brueghel. This weekend it was "avarice".  9 February 2009 A couple of weeks ago I coloured one of the large engravings from Brueghel's famous series of Seven Deadly Sins, which were engraved by Hieronymous Cock in 1558. I have now managed to do another, the amazing 'Luxuria' or lust, with its many quotations of images from Bosch.  1 Febuary 2009 I found this interesting woodcut version of Melancholia, best known as the engraving by Durer (1514). I am not sure of the exact date of the woodcut nor the engraver, but it is apparently made after a woodcut of Sebald Beham (1539) based on the Durer. We can see how Beham in copying from the Durer mirror reverses the image and then the later artist does this again, thus restoring the handedness of the Durer. I have coloured the laeter version.    25 January 2009 By serendipity, which in reality meant spending three hours looking through a series of catalogues of German woodcuts from the last half of the 16th Century, I recently came upon a rather engaging series of seven woodcuts of the classical planets. This weekend I worked on colouring these. The woodcuts were apparently made by an unidentifed artist, cryptically named as 'The Master 4+' He was active in Wittenberg between 1554 and 1580. His line is delicate and subtly formed, giving a detailed image. His series of planets uses the conventions and emblematic ideas about the associations of the planets current at that time, but this has been realised in beautifully crafted images. I have never seen these wonderful woodcuts before and I hope that others might share my enthusiasm for them. It was a great delight to colour them, and hopefully this might make them more easy for the modern eye to appreciate their forms.       
Over the last two weekends I worked on colouring one of the large engravings from Brueghel's famous series of Seven Deadly Sins, which were engraved by Hieronymous Cock in 1558. The fine lines of the engravings are not easy for people to appreciate today, so, as I have done with other emblematic material, I have added colour to help bring out the forms. If I ever find the time, I would like to complete the series.  5 January 2009 Some years ago I came across an 18th century mystical cosmological diagram. I wanted to make a coloured version that would bring out the different components, which were primarily geometrical. I puzzled over this for a long time, but last weekend I decided just to press on and try and see what I could acheive by colouring it. The idea being explored in this engraving is that of the emanation of aspects of the Cosmos through light emerging out of darkness. The light from the Divine flows through a series of spheres, and densifies as it gets further from the Divine. I used various yellows to suggest the densification of the light, adding more earthy reds to the yellow light as I moved down the structure. The larger spheres emblematically represent different worlds, so I coloured these in such a way as to suggest their significance in the hierarchy. Thus the highest sphere is divided into a dark and light half, with the sphere below that in blue as it is the heavenly world, while the large sphere below, the outer world of appearances, is given a more earthly tonality. Choosing the correct colours for such an emblem is quite a difficult task. It requires being able to think through the meaning of the emblem and avoiding any external or personal choice of colour. One must also avoid any clashing of colours and must blend and integrate these. The colours must complement and work with the emblematic imagery. The end result here gives the impression of the Divine light flowing through the various vessels and densifying. 
30 December 2008 Back in April I was wondering about the strange rainbow coloured wings of angels depicted in early European art. I showed a few examples. Yesterday a correspondent, Tanya, wrote to tell me of a rather fine example in The Annunciation by Fra Angelico (Florentine painter c. 1400-1455). Fra Anglelico was also an early exponent of geometric perspective, and I found this image on Google with the perspective construction lines added. The vanishing point appears here to be on the upper left corner of the door lying between the heads of Mary and the Angel. Leonardo, in his Annunciation (1472-75) also places the vanishing point on a line between the heads of these two main figures. I wonder how much this device was used by other artists of the period. 
Here in Glasgow is Botticelli's Annunciation of around 1500, in which he locates the vanishing point close to the forehead of the angel, thus creating a heightened dramatic scene, as the angel seems almost to fall into the space of the picture. 
16 December 2008 Last night I found some rather beautiful images from a manuscript in the National Library of Spain, created by the 16th century Portuguese artist Francisco de Holanda (Hollanda) (1517-1585). This manuscript provided a series of over a hundred illustrations of familiar Biblical scenes. Some of these drawings have been completed by colouring, but the bulk are in penciil and light wash and presumably incomplete. I found the opening series on the Creation a great delight, and also the images from the Apocalypse at the end of the manuscript very fine. Here are two from the opening section on Genesis which for the most part was fully coloured.  
13 December 2008 This weekend I decided to colour two emblems which have been lying on my pile for a year or so. I have for some years wanted to make a coloured version of an engraving from a book by David Joris, but only last year managed to find a good quality image to work from. Joris was a mid 16th century Dutch Anabaptist, who, although initially a conventional Protestant, later became influenced by visions, and apocalyptic enthusiasms and came to see himself as a kind of prophet. His main book 't Wonderboeck was first printed in 1542, but this engraving comes from a later edition. The other engraving I wanted to colour was the titlepage of Abraham Ortelius, Speculum orbis terrarum, Antwerp, 1593, a book on cartography. Again, this is a wonderful piece of emblematics, which sadly almost no one today has any interest in. I often get rather depressed that some of the items that I find of great value, both aesthetically and as emblems, are of almost no interest to others. I try and enthuse people about this material but get no response. I find it strange that people do not immediately engage with this lost art.  
3 December 2008 The Behaim Codex incorporates a series of illuminated paintings on parchment depicting everyday life, particularly the work of tradesmen and women. The manuscript was created by an unknown artist in 1505, and it incorporates the guild rules then current in Cracow in Poland, where it still resides in the Jagiellonian University Library. I was rather taken by the depiction of a painter working on a mural. It reminded me that artists/painters were at that time members of a guild of craftsmen. We all have such a modern view of the artist as an independent creator, that we lose sight of the fact that most of the amazing artwork of the 14th and 15th centuries was created by artists who had an entirely different role in society than they do nowadays. They were seen alongside bakers, shopkeepers, shoemakers, saddle-makers, and so on. 
3 December 2008 One of my correspondents, Carl Lavoie, told me that the Trithemius image was later reused in Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia universalis , Basle, 1544, but in this context, used as a fiend summoned before Marcomir, King of the Franks. 
2 December 2008 Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) collected magic texts and other strange manuscripts for his library in the Abbey of Sponheim. Eventually he was moved from Sponheim because of accusations of necromancy. Stabius (f 1522), a teacher of mathematics in Vienna from 1497, astrologer and poet, got into a dispute with Trithemius and accused him of being the "fabulator omnium fabulosissimus" and to have manufactured monsters and chimeras. In this manuscript of 1515 (now in the National Library of Austria) he caricatures Abbot Trithemius, depicting him with three monstrous heads, a probable allusion to his reputation of being involved in magic. I found this image rather amusing. 
29 November 2008 What initially attracted me to the Albumasar painting was the observation that it was done in the style of early 15th century Flemish paintings which I admire so greatly, even though Herman Tom Ring was painting in the late 16th century. My colleague, Paul Ferguson, has come up with some further information that adds greatly to the context of the painting. It turns out that a set of fifteen pictures representing the Sibyls and the pagan Prophets announcing Christ's arrival, that decorated the choir of the cathedral of Münster were painted by the Flemish painter Robert Campin in 1435 and were damaged at the time of the Anabaptist rebellion in Munster in 1534. It seems likely that these pictures were copied by Ludger tom Ring, and later by his son Herman Tom Ring. It is amazing what one finds lying behind a seemingly simple piece of art. The series itself, part of which survives in the Landesmuseum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Munster, is a great delight. 
28 November 2008A month ago I discovered a portrait of the astrologer Albumasar made by Herman Tom Ring in the late 16th century. Today I obtained (at some expense) a detailed print of the painting and I asked my colleague Paul Ferguson to translate the Latin text at the bottom of the painting. He read this as: "In the first decan of Virgo there arises a beautiful, pure and refined woman with loosened hair", and later on he follows on by saying: "And she nursed a boy whom a certain people call Jesus." and he revealed its context, finding that this is a reference to Book IV of Albumasar's Introductorium maius, which was used in the Middle Ages to defend astrology against attacks from the church, as according to Albumasar astrology seemed to predict the birth of Christ. 24 November 2008 Carl Lavoie has alerted me to the use of emblematic imagery in printer's typographical marks, which they often used on the title page (or the final page of a book) as a kind of branding sign. Professor Joachim Telle has in 2004 published a study of alchemical imagery in these printers' marks. There is well known mid 19th century catalogue by Silvestre. I took a quick glance through this and immediately found an interesting mark used by the Lyon printer Jean Lertout (working between 1575-1594). He uses an image derived from the Rosarium Philosophorum whose woodcuts were printed in 1550. Lertout was aware of alchemy as he printed a work of Paracelsus and another by Duchesne. 
23 November 2008 I have just finished colouring some of the emblems from George Withers A Collection of Emblems, Ancient and Modern printed in 1635. Some of these use emblematic imagery related formally to similar imagery in alchemical and hermetic illustrations of the period - just as an example, the ouroborus. Of course, the fact that A was influenced by B does not mean that B was influenced by A, a mistake many people today seem to make. Alchemical imagery was clearly influenced by the more general emblematic tradition, but rarely has the influence worked in the other direction. It is important to view the emblem book material as part of the cultural context of alchemical imagery, but entirely false to see emblem books as being significantly influenced by alchemy or secretly hiding some alchemical ideas. There are a few cases where there is a clear link, usually through the engraver working on both emblem books and alchemical illustrations. Withers does not seem to have been much influenced by alchemy, even though the imagery strangely seems paralleled in some alchemical engravings.   
20 November 2008 Carl Lavoie kindly pointed out some examples of Zitirons from the second volume of Louis-Catherine Silvestre's Marques typographiques, second volume. 1853-67.  
13 November 2008 A few days ago, during some email correspondence with a fellow researcher, he alerted me to a rather interesting series of four engravings. These are of the four seasons, and are bound into a book in Duke University. I must try and get access to better quality copies. Here is the engraving for Spring and Autumn.  
20 October 2008 I recently found this interesting portrait by a late 16th century German painter Hermann Tom Ring (1520-1597). He did a number of portraits of people of his time and also a series on ancient sybils and sages. The one that caught my attention was Hermes Trismegistus ca 1570 (oil on wood panel). On the right is another from this series, of the astrologer Albumasar. I will take a look at a book on this painter in the University Library.  
13 October 2008 Last week I had a visit from an interesting writer who wanted to buy one of my paintings, but he ended up buying two ! So that was a rather fine day for me. It seems that it is almost impossible to sell paintings through the internet as people do not know what exactly they are buying and understandably are unable to assess the quality of the art work though a computer image. Only when they see these items up close, are they able to make an assessment. Unfortunately I can see no way of increasing the traffic of people able to actually view my paintings. I found this rather fine painting by Jan Mandyn, one of the Antwerp-based followers of Hieronymus Bosch. This is one of his paintings on the theme of the Temptation of St Anthony. Here I show just a small section from the right hand side, which I find rather engaging. 
25 September 2008The long delay in posting an entry on this page, indicates just how little time I have to devote to art. If only I could sell some paintings I would be able to allocate more time to this, but instead I have to turn my time and energies my other publications. However, today I found a rather fine image from an early 15th century manuscript of Augustine's La Cité de Dieu (Paris, c. 1400-1410.) by the illuminator, Orosius Master. It shows a philosopher being instructed by Philosophia, while demons attempt to distract him. 8 July 2008 It is strange how one can go through life misunderstanding a word or term. I just discovered the true meaning of the work "pink". To me this was always merely a rosey colour. Now I have just discovered that is instead refers to a class of art pigments first recognised in the 17th century. These are similar to the so called "lake" pigments, in which a dye stuff is bound to alumina to produce a more permanent pigment - Carmine lake was made in the Medieval period from kermes insect dye fixed with alum. The dye becomes fixed onto the particles of aluminium hydroxide in an alkaline solution. Many such lake colours were developed over the centuries and are still used by artists today. Pinks were similar, but here the dye was attached to some white substance such as finely divided chalk, or even ground eggshell. The first pink was invented in the 17th century. This was yellow pink, then a green pink was made, and a brown pink, as well a a rose pink. The others gradually fell into disuse, and by the 19th century the term "pink" was used to refer only to the rosey colour. 1 July 2008 Sadly I have not been able to find time to undertake much painting recently. The good news in the last week is that I now have a commission to make a facsimile of a section from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. This might take a few months as I have so many other commitments. I have managed to find an hour here and there over the last months, to make some coloured versions of the woodcuts in the Prognostications of Paracelsus. These are a series of 32 woodcuts and are really improved by being coloured. I will make this up into a small book and if I have the time will publish it later this year.  
11 June 2008 Most of the last few weeks I have been working on my new publications, and binding up copies for customers, so I have rather neglected my art. I have, nevertheless, managed to obtain some interesting books on Flemish illuminated manuscripts in the last few days. In one of these I was delighted to find a reasonably sharp reproduction of Simon Bening's self portrait. I have seen this before, but the image was so small that I could barely make out the details. For those who have never heard of him, Simon Bening (1483-1561) was one of the greatest illuminators of the 16th century. His technique and detail is exquisite. Some people see his hand or at least the influence of his work in some of the illuminated alchemical manuscripts of the Splendor Solis. I was lucky enough to have beeen able to see many magnificent examples of his work at the exhibition Illuminating the Renaissance, some years ago in London. The small illustrations in books do not do his work justice at all. I feel drawn to make a facsimile copy of this portrait for my own private collection. People probably will think this a bit silly, but I would like to have a constant reminder in my studio of this amazing artist, who so few people have even heard of. This portrait is in the Victoria and Albert Museum so I will probably write to them and try and obtain a high resolution scan. 
28 May 2008Over the last week or so I have been finalising work on an edition of the Solidonius series of alchemical emblems, for which I made 18 facsimile paintings. I was very much amused today when I came across a reference to the Solidonius in the notable Italian art historian Maurizio Calvesi's interpretation of Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass or The Bride Stripped bare by her bachelors. Calvesi links this idea to the sixth emblem in the Solidonius series. He further suggests that stripping of the bride is a metaphor for the philosophers' stone in the writings of the 17th century alchemist Solidonius. This is rather risible as the figure in the Solidonius is not a woman but a man. It clearly states this in the text. Also the idea that the emblem is illustrating, is the purification of Sol or gold (the young man) through having its impurities stripped away. The text says this can be done through heating it with antimony metal, shown as the figure in brown on the right, or by using aqua fortis (nitric acid), shown as the figure on the left. So nothing to do with brides or the philosophers' stone. Art historians can read far too much into an image ! 19 May 2008 I have decided that I am going to define myself from now on as a 'facsimile painter'. I am getting a bit fed up with people making, what I consider, fatuous and ill-informed remarks about my paintings, saying I should, with all my knowledge of symbolism, do something original and creative, instead of copying the work of others. I fear people are missing the point of my work entirely. Everyone else is doing "something original and creative", so much so that most of these new creations are totally tedious and vapid. My work is to try to uncover and restore the powerful emblematic material from the past that has been neglected, often almost entirely lost and buried in libraries or the basement stores of museums. Just as in my work over the last decades with alchemical texts I have tried to recover obscure material and make it accessible to people, so with my painting I try to make this lost emblematic material also become visible again. My abilities lie in being able to create facsimile paintings, in which the faded colours of the originals can be refreshed and damaged areas repaired, so that the original work itself is able to speak again. Most artists just want to express their own vision, but I am rather tired of this. Instead I want, through my work, to enable the artists of many centuries ago, particularly those involved in alchemical and related allegorical and emblematic material, to have their work appreciated again. In a strange way, in this modern age when every artist is pursuing their own vision, I find myself out on a limb, in a minority of one. Recently, an artist colleague of mine, on seeing my copy of the Rogier van der Weyden, rather hurtfully said it was a complete waste of my time. Well I take delight in the technical details of making a copy of an original work. It satisfies me. At the moment I am working on the Solidonius series of alchemical emblems, and later I will make a start on the Bonacina series. There are also some wonderful paintings that I want to make facsimiles of in the coming years, despite it being a "complete waste of my time". I abdicate from being an "artist" in the modern sense and instead embrace the lable of "maker of facsimilies". 18 May 2008 I have been rather busy with my book publications and unable to finish the many paintings I began this year, however, my editing of books and my painting have at least come together in one project, the making of facsimile paintings of the Solidonius series. As I am beginning to work on publishing this illustrated text, over the passed few days I have been working on the finishing the eighteen small paintings (9 by 7 inches) that are found in this manuscript. I began working on these earlier this year and hopefully should complete them in the coming week. These are based on illustrations in a French manuscript, but I have corrected the faded colours and some small points where the descriptions in the text are at variance with the emblems. I have also made these facsimiles in oils rather than watercoloured drawings.  8 May 2008 Sadly I have not had any time to devote to my painting for a number of weeks. I have just had so much to do binding up books and dealing with various routine chores. I did manage a few hours to frame up the Paracelsus portrait which I have now put up for sale. I also have a pile of books of illuminated manuscripts to look through and study. I also now have to rework the Solidonius alchemical manuscript images, which I made facsimile paintings of earlier this year. These have to be amended in light of the descriptions of the colouring in the text, which I now have had translated. 21 April 2008 Over the last few days I have been pondering over angels' wings. Angels, of course, were a well used emblematic element in illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings. One especial feature that has always intrigued me is a convention that grew up to depict angels with multi-coloured or rainbow wings. This so intrigued me a few years ago, that I made a facsimile painting from a manuscript in the Fitzwilliam Musaeum in Cambridge. What attracted me to that piece was the angel's rainbow wings. Recently I have found many examples of this emblematic convention. Someone recently told me that this arose from the idea of God's Covenant with Noah when God had said that he would show the sign of the rainbow. I was not enirely convinced by that explanation. It seems to rather conflate two separate ideas. No angels were mentioned in the Noatic covenant. So I will keep looking for the source of the rainbow coloured angels' wings, however, like the pot of gold, it may not be easy to find.  
Fitzwilliam Museum. Northern French, before 1468. Angel from the Crucifixion. Fresco by Taddeo Gaddi, before 1366. 
18 April 2008Many illuminated manuscripts are religious in nature, being Books of Hours or other devotional tracts. There must be tens of thousands of Books of Hours preserved in libraries and private collections, and they regularly appear in fine art auctions. During the 14th and 15th centuries there arose a class of people who became relatively wealthy, and one way they could display their status and wealth was to have scribes and illuminators prepare a lavish personal book of devotion. Apart from a few notable examples, I find the content of most of these, though often having amazingly beautiful paintings within them, does not truly engage me. However, there was arising in that time other more secular works, which often allowed the artist a freer expression outside the straightjacket of the formulaic Book of Hours. Thus we find a number of manuscripts with illuminations of Dante, Boccaccio, and even stories such as the Roman de la Rose, Tristan and Isolde. Ovid's Metamorphoses provided a opportunities for the artist/illuminators to explore emblematic material. Here is a beautiful example of Hermaphoditus and the nymph Salmacis from a manuscript of the Metamorphoses in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Astronomical/astrological works began to appear with many wonderful illustrations, even a particular format depicting the Children of the Planets. The Apocalyse provided a source of powerful emblematic imagery and many manuscripts appeared exploring this theme. We also find manuscripts depicting the Triumphs of Petrarch, processions in which a triumphal chariot is being pulled by various people or animals, and this was so popular a format that the imagery was extended beyond that expressed in Petrarch's poems. Indeed, by the 15th century, manuscript illumination had expanded far outside the formula of religious devotional works. This is what makes the artwork of this period so exciting. There is so much to uncover and explore here. 17 April 2008 Last evening I noticed the film of Umberto Eco's novel In the Name of the Rose was being broadcast on television. I took a short glance (for a few minutes) at the film, as I have seen it a few times before, and happened upon the scene when the medieval detective and his sidekick (really Holmes and Watson) first entered the labyrinthine library. The novel is set in 1327 and constantly alludes to manuscripts being copied in the scriptorium by monks. This led me to wish to point out that this is a bit of an anachronism. Many people believe that illuminated manuscripts were all made by monks, indeed some of my correspondents think that alchemical manuscripts emerged out of monastic scriptoria. This is a fanciful idea but not really true. During the 12th century there developed craftworkers, scribes, limners, and illuminators who quickly became much more skilled at their work than monks, so much so that by the beginning of the 13th century they were usually employed to undertake the copying of manuscripts, and by 1250 monks were no longer devoting time to this task, as it was so much more convenient for the religious house to pay these craftsmen for the work. This was happening long before alchemical manuscripts had appeared in any numbers. 15 April 2008 People have been asking me why I seem to be diverting so much of my time to researching 14th and 15th century illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings and they wonder what relevance this can have to alchemy. Well it seems to me that the earliest alchemical manuscript paintings, which only appear early in the 15th century Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit (1412), Aurora consurgens (around 1420), are influenced by the art of the illuminated manuscripts of their period. One thus cannot truly contextualise and understand these images unless one has some grasp of the illuminated manuscript tradition. Let us just consider the images from the Aurora consurgens. We should look at the famous monkey violinist figure. The particular representation of rocks seen below the figures is found in a number of Italian and French manuscripts of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. In the middle is an 14th century example of the stylised rock formations. This stylised representation gives way through the 15th century to a more realistic depiction of rocks and cliffs. The intense red background on this and other images from the Zurich Aurora consurgens is puzzling, until one realises that these were probably prepared as grounds for what is known as diaper work on manuscripts (from the French diapré 'variegated' a repetitive geometric pattern). This was apparently often left for a specialist to do after the paintings had been completed, so it may be with the Aurora consurgens (Zurich manuscript) that this was left unfinished. On the right I show another example of such diaper works from a French manuscript of the mid-14th Century. This use of elaborate patterned backgrounds to images in manuscripts gradually passes from favour through the 15th century and was replaced with naturalistic scenes.   
14 April 2008 For a while I have been looking for a portrait painting of Edward Kelley. There is a famous painting of his colleague and travelling companion Dr John Dee in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, but on Kelley I seem to have drawn a blank. There is a portrait engraving apparently made close to the time of Kelley's life, but not a painting. While undertaking research I was led to some later portraits of these two made at the end of the 19th century for a Polish book. These were made by a book illustrator called Michal Elwiro Andriolli. Through the good offices of my Polish colleague, the writer and academic, Rafal Prinke, I have been able to obtain some scans of these later portrait engravings. I found these rather amusing. Andriolli has chosen to represent these two as rather dissolute. Rather than the imposing view of Dee, confidently engaging the viewer in the Ashmolean portrait, we see here someone rather broken down and suffused with melancholy. Kelley is also shown as rather old and world weary ! It is quite fascinating to see how different ages choose to depict those figures. I wonder how an artist nowadays would chose to show them.  
  13 April 2008 I have spent a great deal of money this weekend, some hundreds of pounds, buying books, primarily on 15th century manuscripts and paintings with an emblematic and allegorical content. This is a subject that cannot be easily researched on the Internet as much of the material online is not well described and the illustrations are very low res so one cannot truly appeciate the artwork. The University library here in Glasgow has an excellent collection of art books, but there are still many gaps and I find I have to buy some books if I want to have easy access to them. The area of 15th century art is quite obscure, being primarily the province of the more academic type of art historian, so there are many manuscripts and painting which have not been well exposed in the public domain but kept within the sphere of a small group of specialists. I find myself really engaged by some of this material, particularly the artwork that moves away from the conventionally religious. Of course, a major part of the artwork of this period are Books of Hours and similar devotional pieces. Artists of that time were primarily commissioned by religious institutions, or wealthy patrons wanting to possess an illumined book to impress their friends of their piety, but there are some wonderful emblematic works alongside these. It is this that I am currently drawn to investigate, thus the large hole in my budget and a pressing need for some more bookshelves ! My own research library is at the moment a complete mess, piled up with books, articles, various prints and images and I will have to sort out some storage shortly or I will not be able to locate things quickly. 
12 April 2008A couple of years ago I undertook some research into the Voynich manuscript. This is a strange manuscript on vellum written in a weird unreadable script which some people suggest is a code though it has never been broken. It seems to date to the late 15th or early 16th centuries. It contains many drawings, a section which is obviously a herbal with pictures of unidentifiable plants, an astronomical section with circular diagrams, a balnealogical section with picture of bathing women, and some other graphical material. About two years ago I presented some new information to the Voynich discussion group that the balnealogical section could well be representations of the thermal and sulphurous healing baths at Pozzuoli in the area called the Phlegrean Fields, West of Naples. This is a volcanic region where hot springs bubble up, and it has been used since Roman times, but was still actively being used in the Medieval and early modern periods. The Voynich discussion group rejected my research as they were taken up with grand theories and most of the contributors did not have their feet firmly planted on the earth and consequently their heads were rather in the clouds. So I had just pushed this to the back of my mind, when today looking at a book on Italian Renaissance book illumination what should I see but a manuscript showing yet another image of the Baths of Pozzuoli, written in the third quarter of the 15th century and thus contemporary with or slightly predating the Voynich manuscript. It seems to me so obvious that the creator of the Voynich manuscript had seen a manuscript depicting the Baths at Pozzuoli, either this one or some other (there are a number which have survived), however, the Voynich speculators are not interested in something so prosaic and obvious. The text of the Voynich cannot be read, but the images can be contextualised and thus the subject matter of the manuscript can be revealed. Art and images so draw on earlier examples, that one can see how images emerge from an earlier context. Just as Bosch drew on the depictions of zitirons and other strange beasts in Flemish manuscripts available in his time, so the author of the Voynich drew on depictions in earlier manuscripts of the baths at Pozzuoli when drawing his figures. Click here to see my 2006 research into the Voynich manuscript. 12 April 2008 Following up on the zitirons (also known as Zeeridders) a correspondent pointed out to me another example in a manuscript in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Hague of Jacob van Maerlant's poem Der Naturen Bloeme. Jacob van Maerlant lived in the 13th century but this particular Flemish manuscript with many illuminations was made around 1350. 
11 April 2008 One of the features I especially like about 15th century art, both in manuscript illuminatons and in paintings, particularly Flemish, are the wonderful stylised landscape forms, usually as appearing as a background to a portrait and often glimpsed through windows. So I was delighted today to find an illustration from the Savoyard Apocalypse which sets the powerful and horrific events of the Apocalypse in this rather charming, gentle and safe landscape. It is this delicious contradiction which especially delights me. Here we see the Whore of Babylon seated on the beast with seven heads, but somehow one does not feel the world is about to end ! I must try and find more images from this manuscript.  10 April 2008 Last night I came across a word I had not heard before - "zitiron". This is a strange beast found depicted in some medieval manuscripts. A zitiron is man-knight riding on or fused with a fish body. Here are two examples, the first from from Queen Mary's Psalter, made in England around 1310-1320, and the second from the Book of Hours of William Lord Hastings, around 1480.  
Hieronymous Bosch must have seen examples of zitirons in manuscripts as he closely mimics these in his Garden of Earthly Delights (created around 1504), and other paintings. It is obvious that Bosch was not entirely driven by imagination or fantasy, but had made a deep study of such imagery in the manuscripts of his time.   9 April 2008 I came across an interesting fact recently when reading Paul Binski's little book Medieval Craftsmen Painters. One is used to the term "miniature" being applied to the paintings in illuminated manuscripts such as the Tres Riches Heures. I had always presumed that this was derived from some Latin word for "small" but it turns out it is instead from the Latin "miniatulus" meaning "coloured with red-lead or cinnabar", through the Italian word "miniatura" which was early on applied to the art of illumining a manuscript. In the ealiest period the creators of manuscripts often embellished pages with delicate illuminations and bordered them with the red lead pigment "minium". It is strange that I have read and studied illuminated manuscripts without picking this up. How many other little blind-spots do I have in my knowledge, I now wonder? 8 April 2008 A few days ago I was looking at a book I have with high quality illustrations of the early 15th century illuminated manuscript Tres Riches Heures, the work of the Limbourg brothers. This Book of Hours was made for the Duc de Berry between 1410 and 1416, and has many wonderful full page miniatures painted on vellum. I was paticularly interested to see some extreme close up illustrations of these illuminations, as one could clearly see that areas of the painting were made with little short strokes of the brush, applied one beside another on top of a ground colour, to give the modelling. Such detail of the way in which the artwork was painted is not easily seen in most illustrations which are very small, and the half-tone screen of the colour lithographic printing obscures this further, but the detailed illustrations in this book revealed this key aspect of the way in which the paintings were created. I show one example here, though the scans I made from the book, in fact, only just show these little stab strokes. You can see these in the sky and the dragon's wing. It reminded me somewhat of the way in which Hieronymous Bosch painted. Bosch's large paintings look, in book sized modern reproductions, to be smoothly modelled, as in the work of Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, or Hugo van der Goes, but on close examination the paint surface is in fact thin and seemingly applied in small strokes.  
7 April 2008Today I have put up for sale the Dee portrait, which I finished in March and have now had framed. This is the first time I have attempted to sell one of my paintings for about three years. Click here to see a larger photograph and details of price. 4 April 2008 I always seem to find it difficult to finish a painting. Once all the forms are well established and the bulk of the painting achieved, there remains a time when one tinkers about with the details, strengthening a shadow here and there, altering the modelling, or smoothing out and blending some transitional tones. Nothing much changes as far as the viewer is concerned, but somehow I feel a bit happier with the result. Unfortunately this process can just go on an on and one must eventually call a halt. Usually I then apply a layer of glaze to smooth and blend the different surface paint textures together. One can still overpaint on top of this thin glaze layer of course, but I rarely do this as it can look like a correction, especially when trying to lighten a dark area. So I fiddle about with the little details for weeks until at last I apply the glaze. 3 April 2008 I have almost completed my facsimile copy of the Splendor solis image in oils. I just have to tighten up and rework some of the details - say another 6 to 10 hours. You can see this on my page showing what I am working on at present. 30 March 2008 I have now obtained good quality photographs of a number of those fascinating tracing boards used in Freemasonry. Most of these date to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A few years ago I made a painting of a masonic tracing board which I subsequently sold. I find these gatherings of symbolism into a stylised painting rather interesting. As far as I understand, these tracing boards were originally made as line drawings on cloth, which were laid out on the floor of a Masonic Lodge during one of their rituals. Later some of these were made into coloured paintings, and it is these that especially interest me. So, when I find the time I will make paintings of these boards, probably in a relatively small format, say 16 by 12 inch in size. As some of these are rather old and have become damaged I will be able to restore them to their original form when making the facsimile paintings. They are a strange form of symbolic artwork but well worth recreating and making them available to people again.        
26 March 2008 It rather saddened me recently to hear that the bulk of the Robert Lenkiewicz paintings are to be sold off next month at an auction house in Exeter. The Lenkiewicz estate have had no choice because of the debts (reportedly around two million pounds) that this wonderful artist left behind when he died in 2002. Some of his paintings were sold a few years ago and also much of his library. Robert was deeply interested in occultism and religious philosophies, not that he was a believer but rather that these aspects of the human condition fascinated him. I got to know him in the 1990's when he would sometimes phone me up to ask my advice about whether he should buy some rare book he had noted in some sale. Eventually I managed to meet up with him at his studio in Plymouth, where he showed me his amazing library, and talked about his project to establish this as a permanent collection open to the public as a research resource. He also wanted to keep his major paintings in Plymouth by setting up a museum/galley for his work. Sadly, his ambitious project is now not to be. He died too young, only 60 years old. Had he had another ten or fifteen years to further his reputation, and establish higher prices for his paintings, I feel sure he would have been able to raise the funds to set up this project. The Lenkiewicz Foundation, no doubt, struggled to rescue Robert's vision, even a part of it. They can probably take comfort in knowing that with the paintings being widely dispersed, Robert's stature will be increased, as these now find their way into public collections and museums worldwide. His paintings are quite breathtaking, few people cannot but be impressed when they first see these works. They have such flair and technical brilliance, and yet they deal with deep social matters. He was certainly one of the greatest British painters of the modern period, though almost totally neglected by the British art establishment who prefer artwork as light switches turned on and off, and packets of adhesive coloured dots to stick on your wall. He was one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. At least one painting will never leave the area, as it was painted on the walls of circular room in a private house. I was privileged to have been able to see this piece, the Riddle Mural which is so technically amazing, even including anamorphic figures. Now what artist has been able to do that since Holbein in 1533? 25 March 2008 Over the passed few days I have made considerable progress with the Splendor solis painting. The illuminated border was particularly difficult and exacting work to copy. This was probably painted by Simon Bening or someone of his stature. I am working on a twice sized copy but I am really pushing at the limits of what can be done. Of course I am using the medium of oils, whereas the original is painted using water based colours on parchment. With watercolours tighter detail can be achieved. I suppose I could have worked in water based acrylics, but I find oil painting more satisfying, and the end result seems much more substantial somehow, but even working with small brushes, there is a limit to how accurately one can push the paint about. The border certainly tests ones ability to paint flowers and multicoloured birds and is a great delight. I have already substantially completed the central image and once I finish the border, I will return to the central image and rework that with more detail. I am rather happy at finally being able to work out a convincing representation for the river estuary in the background. The original is ambiguous and suggests forms with a few strokes of paint. I decided to interpret some areas as being islands in a wide estuary and suddenly the image seems to work for me. As an added bonus, by accident I have created a little atmospheric reflection of light on the water, and this provides a rather nice focus point for the central image. This painting has reached the point where it looks close to completion yet one is aware that there is so much more to do, and there are quite a few problem areas to sort out. Now I have invested many hours of work into the painting I find myself becoming a little paranoid that I might ruin it with a bit of carelessness or a rush of ill-placed enthusiasm. I spent most of the evening working on the two stags in the foreground of the border. 20 March 2008 I took a short break from the complex paintings I am currently working on, and made a painting based on a small illumination in a 15th century Flemish manuscript. This is by an unidentified artist, the Master of Evert Zoudenbalch, sometime around 1465-70 and the manuscript is now in Wolfenbüttel in Germany. I have substantially completed this, though it needs a few hours more work to tighten up the detail and soften the colours. I have enlarged it considerably but it is still a small painting about 7 inches (180mm) square. For comparison I show the original.  
18 March 2008 On seeing that I was now devoting time to painting one of my contacts amused me with the remark that I seem to be the champion of lost causes, constantly swimming against the tide of current opinion. With my attempts to pursue alchemy as it really was, through looking at its original documents, rather than jumping on the esoteric bandwagon that is so popular nowadays. Also my interest in modern tarot as art, when the art world just sneers and ridicules this as junk and ephemera. Now he says, I have gone one better and am trying to interest people in art that died 500 years ago. He thought me completely misguided in trying to make facsimile copies of 15th century artworks, and even suggested that one can buy these from various Chinese factories for around $50, so why bother. I must say I found this a little bit insulting as this person has not seen the quality of my paintings nor compared them to the output of the Chinese sweatshops. I saw a documentary on these Chinese mass produced paintings recently. One artist was making a copies of the same painting by van Gogh working on a kind of assembly line, where he did 20 or so at at time, going from painting to painting working on the same area. It seems he was making hundreds of copies a day! I wonder how he would manage making a copy of the Rogier van der Weyden or an detailed alchemical work such as an image from the Splendor solis. Anything can look good when it is shown as a small image on the computer screen. As always I seem to be out on a limb, pursuing a vision that few seem to share. I am lucky to have a sense of humour and not take too seriously such criticisms. To have my work compared to the rubbish being churned out of China is depressing yet amusing at the same time. 15 March 2008 One of the difficulties I have is in finishing a painting. The sort of work I produce is so very detailed and when I am working on a painting there always arises a point when all the major forms are well established and the rewarding task of solving all the problems of construction and finding ways of creating particular effects and balancing the colours across the piece has been completed. One is then left with the task of finishing all the details. This requires quite a lot of will power. Other artists tend just to leave out the details and textures, merely suggesting them with some broader brushstrokes. It is perhaps my folly that I like to view paintings up close, and thus I want the detail to be there, even when it is viewed from a foot or so away. Usually when the painting looks complete to most people, I am not satisfied and feel I have to do at least as much work again on the details. Though it might look good when seen from 4 or 6 feet out, I feel I need to put in more detail so that it will look even better from that distance and will stand an even closer viewing. At the moment I have four paintings at this stage, so I must over the next few weeks use all my will power and determination to work on the details. I saw a documentary about the artist Whistler recently, and he was striving to create effects in his paintings that would be seen from a distance. Thus he had special long handled brushes made for him (seemingly about three feet long) so that he could stand some considerable distance from his canvas when painting. There are a number of Whistlers here in Glasgow in the Hunterian Art Gallery and I have looked at these a few times. I can see how his art works when seen from across the room, but I cannot really appreciate it up close as the texture of the brushstrokes seems to get in the way. 
13 March 2008I have almost completed my portrait of John Dee. I probably need another short session of a couple of hours just to tidy up a few areas and blend some elements together. Then I have to leave it to fully dry for some weeks before varnishing it. I will have to sort out a frame for it then hopefully I will offer it for sale, probably early in May. I expect this will sell rather quickly as I have already had a couple of enquiries. It is a small painting on board 11.25 by 8.75 inches (285 by 223 mm). 
11 March 2008Recently I was able to obtain high resolution scans of the Splendor solis manuscript which is now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg. Most people only know the Splendor solis as the version in the British Library and few realise that it is a copy made in 1582 from the Nürnberg version which was painted in 1545, some 37 years earlier. The Nürnberg version seems much more finely painted, particularly the illuminated border, but rarely reproduced in modern books on alchemy, as the British Library version is much more accessible. Some people have even suggested that the border and the central image were painted by different specialist artists. Unfortunately the Nürnberg manuscript images have sustained a little damage, at least some colour changes, possibly due to dampness, degeneration in the underlying vellum, earlier attempts at cleaning, or perhaps some surface varnish which has changed its translucency. It seems to me to be a surface phenomenon. When I have time I intend to make a facsimile painted copy which will attempt a restoration of these colours of the famous image of the man emerging from the swamp. 9 March 2008 I have decided that the next painting I will attempt is the miniature by Jean Perreal (c1460-1530) which prefaces an alchemical poem, La Complainte de Nature, in a manuscript in the Sainte-Genevieve library in Paris. The painting has been dated to 1516, (thus predating the Splendor solis). I did make a facsimile of this back in 2000 which I sold rather quickly, and, as I did in that painting, I will extend the image to the left of the plant form so as to include the bud. I always felt the image looked a bit cropped off. The vanishing point for the perspective in the original is outside the image, which can be unsatisfactory for the viewer. I will also reddraw and extend the image to the right of the alchemist's tower a small amount, as I find the incomplete door and window slightly unsatisfactory. I will also extend the painting upwards a little as one does not clearly see the light descending down onto the flask. I have just been reading an excellent article on this painting by the alchemical scholar Barbara Obrist. Scholars are so good at finding things and she tentatively associates the image of the large plant with a gigantic lily set up on the Bourgneuf Gate of the city of Lyons to celebrate the return of King Francis I in 1515. Perreal may have been involved in planning these celebratory decorations. Anyway I have made a provisional tracing for the painting enlarging it a little at the sides.  
8 March 2008 I have decided now to allocate as much time as possible over the next year to producing more paintings. When working on my recent painting I found that the colour temperature of the light under which I was working was too low, too red. I use a dual quartz halogen floodlight some distance back from my easel and some daylight spotlamps close up to the painting to add more blue to the lighting. This is inadequate, so I have now installed a metal halide floodlight high up on the wall of my workshop. This is a much higher colour temperature light source but being basically an arc light it is rather harsh, so I have mounted it on the other side of the room from my painting work space and this just adds to the colour spectrum without dominating the illumination. The light thus shines from above over my shoulder, hopefully mimimising casting my shadow onto the area I am working on. I will try it out over the next few days in the hope that it solves a few problems. It is essential not to look direct at this light source as it is so bright. 7 March 2008 People sometimes say to me, "you should make some original paintings rather than copying these old works". To many people, art is all about originality, an artist is someone who creates something entirely new. Of course this does not apply to music, as so many people prefer to hear the works of long dead composers such as Telemann, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy and all the others, and even avoid listening to music being composed nowadays. In an inverted way, my work is very different in that I am not interested in creating something original, but in restoring and reviving artworks of centuries ago, and especially those with allegorical, alchemical and emblematic import. The world is full of artists all doing completely different and original things, many of which seem very poor, apart from being entirely devoid of technique. The art world is full of such rubbish, all labelled as "original". Yesterday I came across one of those silly entirely media driven art stories. Helena Seget has a pet rat whom she calls 'Tony Blair'. Somehow she has managed to get some bits of wire, discarded food and nuts which have been chewed by this rat, exhibited in the Lime Studio Gallery in Newcastle and even mentioned on the prestigous Saatchi Gallery website. This rat even has a weblog. It is rather depressing to see such nonsense given public exposure - no doubt some sad individuals will buy these chewed up shreds, or she will get some publicity for her other work on the back of this. Here I am struggling with the nuances of the different earth tones, the wonderful transparency of raw and burnt Sienna, how the opacity of Naples Yellow is useful in flesh tones, and how a delightfully subtle greyish green arises from mixing Prussian Blue with burnt Sienna and Vandyke Brown. We admire technique in a concert pianist, a ballet dancer, an ice skater, or a jazz musician, but it seems that it is no longer much valued in art. 6 March 2008 A few years ago I found an interesting illustration in a modern French book on alchemy. This engraving clearly showed a figure carrying a shield with sun, moon stars and winged heart and I put it down as an alchemical emblem. This modern French book did not identify the book from which it was taken, except to say it was an illustration in a work of Louis Cadet de Gassicourt (a late 18th and early 19th century writer). I asked some colleagues what it could be and one suggested that it was most likely an emblem of St Jerome with no alchemical significance. I put it in my pile of images to colour and eventually forgot about it. A week or so ago it surfaced from a pile of images and I decided to hand colour it. A few days later I was in the University library looking at some art books, when suddenly I spotted a woodcut by Durer that was of the same image, the only difference being, that the engraving was a mirror image of the Durer. I realised how stupid I had been. The figure in the Durer woodcut is holding his staff in his right hand, while in the engraved version it was in his left. The engraving had obviously been copied from the Durer, as this printing process reverses the left and right sides of an image. I should have noticed that earlier. The Durer woodcut is quite delightful and I immediately began making a coloured version of this image also. The Durer woodcut was made in 1494 and was included in an Italian book Gerson nei panni del pellegrino ("Gerson in the clothes of a pilgrim"). Jean Gerson (1363- 1429) was French scholar, educator, reformer, theologian and poet. So this image is not alchemical but certainly allegorical and emblematic. I show the two images side by side (the Durer on the left and the later engraving on the right.  
5 March 2008 In making my paintings I now use alkyd oil paints. These are prepared like conventional oil paints but using a special alkyd oil. This gives them exceptionally fast drying times. When I first started painting in oils I found the slow drying time frustrating, as I paint in very great detail and I often found that when working on the painting the next day, I could damage or smear an area I had previously worked on, merely by contacting it with my sleeve or the side of my hand. Alkyds dry so quickly, and as I use thin layers of paint, it meant I could begin working again on a painting without any fear of damaging it. Alkyd oil paints, at least in the product I use produced by Winsor and Newton, have other interesting properties. They seem very finely ground, and are not sticky or chalky as with some oil colours. Most of the pigments are transparent which makes them a delight to use for my particular painting style, which relies on many thin layers of paint. The method of painting using glazes, which was commonly used in the early paintings I like to copy, must have been very frustratiing for early artists as they had to wait some considerable time for a glaze layer to dry before applying a layer on top of that, probably weeks. If they painted on top too early they would loosen the underlayer and the pigments would puddle. With alkyd oils the underlayer can usually be over painted on the next day without the danger of loosening and puddling. So effectively I can mimic the use of glazes and finish a painting in days rather than weeks. The alkyds pigments I use are also wonderfully luminous and very suited to painting in thin layers. In general I don't use a medium, as the paints themselves have a good measure of alykd medium in them and I can paint with them neat, as it were, or with just a very little turpentine or even white spirit. This does produce slight differences of reflectiveness with areas of different pigments, especially those mixed with white, and so when I complete a painting I oil out the work with liquin alkyd medium, which gives it a wonderful glaze, like a deep varnish. I really enjoy that moment as all the little imperfections seem to become smoothed away and the colours glow even more luminous. 
4 March 2008I am continuing to work on my version of the right wing of Rogier van der Weyden's Braque Triptych. This small scale piece was made around 1450 for the oratory of a wealthy merchant, Jean Braque. The right wing shows Mary Magdalen. I was rather drawn to this work, not for its religious theme, but for the wonderfully melancholic figure of Mary, and her setting in an idealised Northern European landscape. As with many of these 15th century works the areas where the artist has used significant amounts of white mixed in his paints, such as the sky and the face, have badly cracked, so I like to make a copy which shows a little of how the painting would have looked in the the century immediately after it was painted. I also worked her blue cloak in a slightly different way, using continuous tones for the modelling, rather than the way in which Rogier painted the form of the cloak in a dark colour then modelled the folds using small strokes and filaments of slightly lighter blue paint. I worked the face in just two sessions and will not touch it any more, as the thin paint layer seems to look okay. One thing I really like about this painting is the idealised landscape. I will spend a great number of hours adding as much detail into this as I can see in the reproduction I have of Rogier's painting, as it really makes the painting. I have done it about the same size as Rogier's original. It is at the limits of my technical ability. I show the original opposite. When I get access to my digital camera I will photograph my version and put it up on this site. It will be an expensive painting as it will absorb many hours of my time. 3 March 2008 Over the last few months I have found myself especially drawn to 15th century Flemish paintings. One element often found in such paintings is a window which looks out onto a stylised landscape. We see this in Rogier van der Weyden's St Luke Drawing a Portrait of the Virgin c. 1450. St Luke was of course the patron saint of painters.  
Rogier was obviously echoing Jan van Eyck's Madonna with Chancellor Rolin, made a decade or so earlier in 1436 (which I show on the right). I really love the view though the window in van Eyck's painting out across the town set astride a river, and if I can ever get a sufficiently detailed image of this, I will attempt to make a facsimile painting in oils of this view through Jan van Eyck's window of an idealised townscape. 
|