AN ALCHEMY MEDAL

Auction 282 - Lot number 4792: City of Nuremberg. Silver medal, no year (ca. 1700), die cut by Philipp Heinrich Müller, from the Friedrich Kleinert medal mint. Luna-Diana over Mercury, lying on the burning stake. Rev. Winged Saturn chains fleeing Mercury with vine, between them Jupiter, sitting on an eagle and holding a torch. Estimate: 4,000 euros

When this medal was produced, many alchemistic theories were part of the intellectual common knowledge of the educated upper class. It was known, that the sun was connected to gold, the moon to silver, Mars to iron and the movable Mercury to the ever changing quicksilver. Jupiter represented pewter, Venus copper and Saturn lead. Earth wasn’t assigned a metal, because the general thinking (still) thought of it as the center of the universe, not a planet.

Alchemy was a complicated science, which many important scholars had devoted their time to already in the Middle Ages: Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Aquinas, Roger Bacon. They were fascinated by the possibility to explore and describe the world through scientific methods. Since this art meant high commitment and spending a lot of money, many alchemists were looking for a patron, who would finance their studies.

The medal’s theme is the transformation of one metal to another. NON FVI, QVOD ERAM; NVNC SVM, DVM MORIOR (= I wasn’t what I was, now I am, by dying). This is what Luna says as the goddess of the moon, symbol of the element of silver, which, through heat, can be extracted from quicksilver, for which the god Mercury stands at the stake.

The reverse displays the combination of lead (Saturn), pewter (Jupiter) and quicksilver (Mercury). Saturn chains the fleeing Mercury with vines, whom Jupiter warms with his fire. And alchemy wouldn’t be a secret science, if outsiders wouldn’t be puzzled by the meaning of motif and legend: Thus my blood relations chain me because I fled the arts.

In fact, this medal is not only a testimony for a way of thinking, which ultimately led to one of the most important sciences: Chemistry. Furthermore, the medal also shows the human weakness of a master of his craft, who ruined himself with his passion for alchemy and left behind this rare medal as a reference to his passion.

To read the complete article, see:
The age of alchemy (/www.kuenker.de/en/information/presseinformationen/aktuelle-mitteilungen/89)

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