Or would it do something to preserve the body?
David Brafman, The Getty, Getty Research Institute, Department Member. And the Egyptians knew that lead was toxic if you ate it, but it would also be toxic if rats, mice, insects ate it. As the first Curator of Rare Books at the Getty Research Institute, Marcia Reed developed the rare book and print collections. But I think in the end, alchemy was a science that was infused with spirituality and an extra spritz of artistic spirit. When and how did that happen? Usually they have one color or two. View David Brafman’s profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. They were supplying art and medical industries.CUNO: Mm-hm, mm-hm. It represents something?
You have to figure out how to create these colors yourself. And that’s my stock answer.CUNO: Our theme music comes from “The Dharma at Big Sur,” composed by John Adams for the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2003. Tell us how that came to be, and how do we see that here, standing in front of this case with things related to the so-called stone of the philosophers?BRAFMAN: Well, certainly, alchemy becomes associated with creativity much earlier in parts of Asia and in Africa.
And it’s only in 1723 that an art theorist, Jacques (read: Jacob) [Christopher] Le Blon, publishes a book, Il Coloritto. What was the most surprising question you’ve been asked? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what this metaphor is showing is—it’s basically using art to express a scientific process. And we had acquired it really to see what it might contribute to the history of visual symbolism in art history, on such subjects as allegory, metaphor, and how such things were represented in artworks. I think how he came to propose it goes back to what we were saying about just the human urge to grasp the world. David has 1 job listed on their profile. And he credits her with most of the apparatus that is still used today in distilleries. It’s filled with cryptic imagery. Thanks for listening.JIM CUNO: Hello, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. He also says that those elements are indivisible, the way we understand elements. Some people say that he was an Egyptian priest that worked in a secret laboratory of the Egyptian priesthood. There is a manuscript in Paris that preserves some of Zosimos’ writings. I think in the heart of every chemist, still beats the heart of an alchemist. Her research focuses on the literature of art history, illustrated books, prints, and maps, with special interests in the eighteenth century and the contemporary period.
And that is part of what always impelled alchemy. And the Greek word for indivisible or uncut is And like I said, he was also a physician. Would someone unroll it like a—as in a Chinese scroll of some kind, and it would tell a long narrative of some kind?BRAFMAN: This is the question that is asked of me on every tour, and I still don’t have an answer to it. And then you recombine them. And that was depicting science through art, using these different artistic metaphors to express these different chemical reactions and physical processes.As for the philosophers stone, something that is remarked upon, I think even as early as Zosimos, is that if you take the mineral cinnabar, which was composed of mercury and sulfur, mercury sulfide is its basic component.