Alchemy as a symbolic framework in nineteenthcentury Western art: a comparative analysis of Rossetti, Moreau and De Morgan

Abstract

Within a context in which experimental science redefined the limits of legitimate knowledge, alchemy acquired new visual and symbolic expressions in nineteenth-century western art. This study adopts a qualitative, iconographic-symbolic approach that treats alchemical concepts as structures rather than decorative motifs. The chromatic stages of transformation, the Sol–Luna polarity, and the principle of coniunctio oppositorum are employed as interpretive tools to examine how meaning is constructed through composition, color, and figural relationships. These tools are applied to three case studies from England and France. The analysis demonstrates that alchemy functions as a visual logic responding to the intellectual and spiritual fragmentation of modernity. The revival of alchemy provided artists with a symbolic framework through which tensions between matter and spirit, tradition and modernity, and vision and knowledge are negotiated. The study argues that alchemy operated as a visual-symbolic method contributing to the transformation of aesthetic discourse.