Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1579-1644)

Name: Portraits of J. B. Van Helmont and F. M. Van Helmont
Author: unknown
Date: 1662
Medium: Engraving
Location: J. B. Van Helmont, Oriatrike, or, Physics Refined, 1662, English translation of Ortus medicinae, 1648
Publisher: Lodowick Lloyd
Credit: Wellcome Library
Photo by: n/a
Copyright: CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International).
Permalink: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/knjktge4
Description: This is the only known portrait of Jan Baptist Van Helmont, possibly drawn posthumously as it appeared in Ortus medicinae, 1648, four years after Van Helmont's death. Francis Mercurius Van Helmont, one of Jan Baptist's sons, was entrusted with ordering, editing and publishing his father's works. He used this opportunity to advance his own image as the heir of Van Helmont, hence the double portrait (Credit: Jo Hedesan). 

Name: Portrait of Jan Baptist Van Helmont
Author: n/a
Date: 1683
Medium: Engraving
Location: J. B. Van Helmont, Aufgang der Artzney-Kunst
Publisher: Johann Andrea Endters, Sulzbach, 1683
Credit: Wellcome Library
Photo by: n/a
Copyright: CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International).
Permalink: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/nsdfwejc
Description: This is the best-known image of Van Helmont, and was featured in Walter Pagel's monograph on the physician. However, it is most likely based on the 1648 double portrait, which the engraver elaborated upon more or less successfully (Credit: Jo Hedesan).

Name: Engraving from Van Helmont, Aufgang der Artzney-Kunst, 1683
Author: Johann Holst
Date: 1683
Medium: Engraving
Location: J. B. Van Helmont, Aufgang der Artzney-Kunst
Publisher: Johann Andrea Endters, Sulzbach, 1683
Credit: Wellcome Library
Photo by: n/a
Copyright: CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International).
Permalink: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ey3kcgqe
Description: This engraving reproduces a Baroque allegory that Van Helmont used in his published treatise Tumulus pestis (1644), later added to the Ortus medicinae of 1648. Here Van Helmont presented his exploration of the causes of the plague by means of an intricate allegory, where famous physicians climb down into a subterranean cave  that hides the grave (tumulus) where the plague originates from and try to reach it, only to fail miserably. Even Paracelsus, the best of the physicians in Van Helmont's eyes, could not reach it, but only Jan Baptist could (Credit: Jo Hedesan).