The Alchemist

Original illustration 

Nib and ink on Arches cotton paper mounted on a Mdf wooden panel 

300gsm /140lb

30.5x40.5cm / 12x16in

2017

Unframed

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This is a very special and important piece. One of my very first Nib and ink Blackwork illustration from 2016/2017, inspired by the story of Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero. He was an Italian nobleman, inventor, soldier, writer, scientist and alchemist, best remembered for his reconstruction of the Chapel of Sansevero in Naples.

Many legends grew up around his alchemical activities: that he could create blood out of nothing, that he could replicate the liquefaction of blood of San Gennaro, that he had people killed so that he could use their bones and skin for experiments. The Chapel of Sansevero was said to have been constructed on an old temple of Isis, and di Sangro was said to have been a Rosicrucian. To justify this, locals pointed to a massive Statue of the God of the Nile, located just around the corner from his home.

To add to the sense of dread, di Sangro's family home in Naples, the Palazzo Sansevero, was the scene of a brutal murder at the end of the 16th century, when the composer Carlo Gesualdo caught his wife and her lover in flagrante delicto, and hacked them to death in their bed.

Raimondo di Sangro died in Naples in 1771, his death being hastened by the continuous use of dangerous chemicals in his experiments and inventions. In 1794, the Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg named the plant genus Sansevieria after him.