Nature

Mirror of the whole of nature and image of art

This remarkable image sums up the 'golden chain' which connects art and nature, the cosmos and God in the philosophy of the English physician, Robert Fludd (1574-1637).
 
Art as the ape of nature. This basic configuration derives from a typical depiction of the geocentric cosmos, with the earth at the centre surrounded by a series of terrestrial spheres, enclosed in turn by those for the planets and stars. In this case, however, on the earth sits an ape, measuring a sphere with a pair of dividers. This is an image of human artifice as the 'ape of nature', which can only imitate what Nature herself accomplishes. The four spheres surrounding the earth are not, as in the normal diagram, devoted to the four elements: in this case they represent four spheres in which human artifice is applied.  Three correspond to the three kingdoms of the natural world. First comes 'art correcting nature in the mineral kingdom', represented by the art of distillation. This is the sphere of alchemy, which ultimately aspires to transmutation of base metals into gold and of toxic substances into medicines but also has an infinitude of more mundane and practical uses. The second sphere contains 'art assisting nature in the vegetable kingdom', illustrated by the cultivation of the soil and the grafting of trees. The third sphere embraces the work of 'art supplementing nature in the animal kingdom', illustrated by the artificial incubation of eggs, silkworms, and bees (which were thought to be generated spontaneously in the carcass of a bull). The fourth sphere is devoted to the ‘more liberal arts’, less utilitarian in their goals and less manual in their practice.  Here the linguistic arts of the trivium are displaced entirely by an expanded list of practical mathematical disciplines, including not only the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, but geomantia, cosmography, timekeeping, engineering, the new art of fortification, perspective, and painting. These arts are more clearly represented in Image 2, which provides the title page for the relevant section of Fludd’s work. Within this encyclopaedic treatise, separate treatises are devoted to each of these arts: the title pages for music, geometry, optics, painting, and the art of war are reproduced as Images 3-7. 
 
Nature as mother of the arts. The key point of this diagram, however, is that these various spheres of human artisanal endeavour are not autonomous: they are intimately bound up with the higher spheres of the cosmos. Art is merely the ape of nature, and the arm of the ape at the centre of this image is symbolically chained to the wrist of Nature herself, the female figure who bridges the cosmic gap between earth and heaven. On her right breast is the sun, on her left the moon; her right foot stands on the earth, her left on the water; so she combines Sulphur (sun and earth, hot and dry) and Mercury (moon and water, cold and wet), which are the core principles of alchemy and without which nothing can be created. She unites the terrestrial realm (minerals and metals, plants, and animals including man) with the celestial realm of the seven planets and the stars. A few of the innumerable correspondences are indicated by juxtaposition or connection: the sun with man (hot and dry), the moon with woman (cold and wet); Saturn with lead and antimony, Venus with copper and orpiment.
 
Art, nature and God. But Nature herself is not autonomous: she too is bound by a golden chain to a still higher plane of existence, symbolised by a hand reaching down from a numinous cloud inscribed with the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters expressing the unutterable name of God. Just as the entire natural world is part of God’s Creation, so likewise every aspect of human art and creativity – whether inspired by the imitation of nature or received as a donum Dei– is ultimately derived from the divine creative power. The painter and mathematician, the physician, beekeeper, and farmer all manifest the creative power of God and nature, and so – in superlative fashion – does the alchemist himself.
 
Credits.  Howard Hotson (May 2019), drawing upon the parallel account in Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy(Chicago, 2013), pp. 196-8.