"ATHANORS". APOTHECARY-ALCHEMIST'S MANUSCRIPT. - Lot 1

Lot n° 1
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
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Result : 13 000EUR
"ATHANORS". APOTHECARY-ALCHEMIST'S MANUSCRIPT. - Lot 1
"ATHANORS". APOTHECARY-ALCHEMIST'S MANUSCRIPT. Curious little manuscript by an apothecary, alchemist or practicing engineer. S.l.n.n. (France or Italy, late 16th-early 17th century). Containing notes and recipes and illustrated with numerous drawings of athanors and distillation apparatus. In-12 oblong, (130) ff. on fine laid paper. Contemporary soft-stitched vellum, double cold-stamped fillet framing the boards (numerous wear defects, wetnesses, partially unbound quires, a few leaves detached, worm damage to jaws, spine missing, vellum soiled and slightly shrunken). Written in what appears to be Renaissance Middle French, it contains 72 mute drawings in sepia ink, 15 blank ff. and 43 handwritten ff. in fairly fine handwriting, sometimes in lightened ink. The manuscript can be read in 2 ways: on one side, a series of technical drawings; on the other, a handwritten text in fine, difficult handwriting, divided into paragraphs with "titles", approximately 16-17 lines per page, and mixing French, Latin and possibly a few terms of foreign origin (Provençal? Italian?). The whole evokes a work or travel diary belonging to a Renaissance practitioner: doctor, apothecary, distiller or alchemist-engineer. The muted drawings depict what appear to be various devices and instruments: dishes, retorts, matras, alembics, distillation or muffle furnaces, as well as what could be complex heating and fractional distillation devices. Some of the more unusual sketches, such as a cannon-lifting system, may reflect technical or military concerns. The whole takes on an aesthetic and mysterious character, perhaps unintentionally and in retrospect. The text, for its part, seems to contain various recipes and processes, for example what appears to be a preparation for counterfeiting musk, reminiscent of certain 16th and 17th century treatises on perfumery and cosmetics. This manuscript could be likened to a rare late-Renaissance practitioner's artifact, in a tradition reminiscent of certain works and engravings by Georgius Agricola, Jacques Besson and Johann Kunckel.
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