This paper addresses the links between alchemy, mining and religion in the early modern alchemical iconography of the German mining theorist Martin Sturtz. He created a special version of the prayer Vaterunser (Our Father) for miners and metallurgists and used the images from Christian and alchemical iconography to demonstrate the history of the creation of metals and how they grow inside the Earth. In one of his images, the Saviour is crucified against the background of coloured strips or stripes, symbolizing the seven metals inside a sedimentary complex. In another miniature, the blood spilling from his wound gives rise to ore veins in which metals ripen. These and the other iconographical and textual examples from Sturtz’s treatises show the attempt to connect the mining process with alchemical theory and Christian religion. This paper will shed light on the origins of this unusual alchemical imagery and its connection with other alchemical and theological works, especially those by Paul Lautensack.

This paper investigates a rather unexpected connection between the alchemy of vermilion, mercury sulphide (HgS), and the primary red highlighted in a colour theory that emerged in the late fifteenth century: trichromacy of colour mixtures. Some early supporters of trichromacy indeed identified the hue of vermilion as the ideal simple red they discussed in their books. The colours observed during the manufacturing of this pigment led to the alchemical colour sequence described in texts and images about the sulphur–mercury theory, and they are in some recipes the same primary colours of trichromatists. This paper also shows that the era of vermilion lasted until the late eighteenth century, when vermilion was finally rejected by other trichromatists.