The Hieroglyphic Figures attributed to Nicolas Flamel

Coloured etchings and paintings after the emblematic figures attributed to the Paris scrivener Nicolas Flamel, held by Wellcome Collection. Flamel's text describes, at length and in the first person, the paintings on a book he says he bought secondhand, and pointedly declines to reproduce them; the museum's note on this series records that the images were only actualised in 1672, in W. Salmon's edition. Thirteen sheets are here and they fall into four kinds. Four of them, numbered 4, 6, 7 and 8, draw Flamel's descriptions clause by clause and are keyed against Eirenaeus Orandus's English of 1624. Four more take their details from the Apocalypse and are keyed against the Douay-Rheims. Four were filed under Flamel in September and are not his, on the museum's own evidence, and their records now say so. One, the magi sheltering in a cave, is still unread.

13 works · Wellcome Collection