Ryckaert, David

FIGURE i6. David Ryckaert, Scholar with Homunculus in Glass Phial, seventeenth century. Reiss-Engelhorn Museen Mannheim. Photo credit Jean Christen. 

The Flemish painter David Ryckaert s portrait of an alchemist (Figure i6) combines the untidy desk littered with vanitas symbols, the vase (here containing not urine, but the coming-to-form of a homunculus), and the wife. Like Madame de Lavoisier, the wife peers over the shoulder of her seated husband. In Ryckaert s work, the alchemist wears an expression of horror. The glass contains a little man, or perhaps the devil. The wife raises her hand in dismay. Meanwhile, in the corner, a child blows a pig s bladder, a common symbol of futility. 

It is not surprising that the model for David Ryckaert s alchemist (Figure 16) is recycled by the ardst in a number of his tavern scenes. 

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