By Nia Minoli and Anna Mowery
It will take more than a few visits for new readers at the Warburg Institute Library to get to grips with the library’s unique classification system. Spread across 4 floors, the library collection of over 360,000 volumes, is organised thematically, with each book shelved under one of four broad categories: ‘Image’ (history of art), ‘Word’ (language, literature and the transmission of texts), ‘Orientation’ (religion, magic and science) and ‘Action’ (cultural and political history). These four themes are the product of close collaboration between the library’s founder Aby Warburg and his colleague Gertrud Bing (who became director of the Institute in 1955). This thematic classification system is based on Warburg’s own art historical thinking, which displaced the traditional art historical studies of aesthetic judgement by putting greater value on the iconographical aspects of artwork.
Figure 1: Gertrude Bing and Aby Warburg in Rome 1929
Warburg and Bing’s classification system, which was heavily influenced by their research on the legacy of antiquity in medieval and early modern culture, placed artworks and iconography into the ‘cultural milieu from which they sprang.’[1] Warburg’s line of thinking has inspired art historical methodology ever since, and is indeed what inspires this blog, as we trace the iconography of the ‘hermaphrodite’ from its origin in classical myth, to the alchemical works of medieval and early modern Europe.
Whilst the word ‘hermaphrodite’ is now understood to be a derogatory term, in this blog we use it in reference to classical, medieval and early modern sources. Indeed, as argued by Leah DeVun, in the European Middle Ages the term ‘hermaphrodite’ was not always associated to individuals.[2] Instead, it was often used as an abstract analytical tool through which to explain the very nature of human identity.[3] As such, the ‘alchemical hermaphrodite’ provides a powerful tool through which to explore how medieval scientists were thinking about sex and gender within the wider world.
Figure 2: Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). La Bible des poëtes, Métamorphose. Paris (Verard). 1493. Folio: 40r.
First coined in antiquity, the term ‘hermaphrodite’ derives from the classical myth which was first narrativized in book 4 of Ovid’s ninth century poem, Metamorphosis. In a well-trodden classical topos, the story follows the wanderings of a son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who rejects the declarations of love from the transgressive nymph Salmacis. Angry at this rejection, she attacks the young boy, enfolding him with her body whilst praying to the gods that they shall never be separated. The gods answer her prayer, and the boy and nymph are conjoined into one being named Hermaphroditus.
Figure 3: Salmacis Embracing Hermaphroditus. Ovide moralisé. Folio: 102v.
From its classical origins, this figure of ‘Hermaphroditus’ has been the subject of great intrigue, as the possibilities offered by this nonbinary-sexed being have been refigured throughout centuries. Remaining popular in literature and art, the figure of the ‘hermaphrodite’ appears throughout medieval Europe in a range of texts. In particular, by the late fourteenth century, the ‘hermaphrodite’ played a particularly important role in the study of alchemy.
Combining science, religion and ritual, medieval and early modern alchemists studied the composition and properties of matter with the aim of developing a greater knowledge of the cosmos for human improvement. Within this, the ‘hermaphrodite’ became a symbol used to represent the scientific quest for the philosopher’s stone, also known as the ‘rebis.’
Figure 4: Hermaphrodite. Lux Lucens in tenebris. 1584.
In the alchemical treatises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, metals were categorised by their contrasting properties of the four elements. As seen in the ‘Five Treatises on the Philosopher’s Stone’ attributed to Alphonso V, the King of Portugal and published in 1651, “the ancient chaos, according to my judgment, was knit together by the fowre elements.” [4] The binary properties of these elements were believed to signify human bodies, and were explained through the division of the sexed male and female bodies. The ‘rebis’ however, was believed to be a perfectly balanced transmuted matter, that was formed of both mercury and sulphur, of both man and woman, whose unity was materialised in the ‘alchemical hermaphrodite’. As described in Five Treatises, “our Hermes tells us that it is Heaven and Earth, but others call it Man and Wife.” The transformation of the ‘hermaphrodite’ therefore, was seen as the restoration of an imperfect nature to a perfect form.
The scientific pursuit of the ‘rebis’ therefore, places the achievement of material transformation itself, over the material product of gold. The importance of this has been emphasised by Micah James Goodrich, whose work on trans-animacies in premodern alchemy demonstrates how through transformation, the ‘alchemical hermaphrodite’ provides new concepts of life and generation.[5] The ‘alchemical hermaphrodite’ does not simply move between binary genders, but unites its contrary parts. This transformation of the ‘rebis’ has been represented in these premodern works through the iconography of a single body. Much like the depictions of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, the ‘rebis’ is depicted as the unification of the sexed-male and female bodies, often joined at the torso – multiple examples of which can be found in the Warburg’s Photographic Collection.
Figure 5: The Hermaphrodite with a Phoenix. Zentralbibliothek – 172, fol. VD 2 – 15th century
The legacy of the ‘alchemical hermaphrodite’ carries on into the early modern period, finding particular popularity in literary circles. Poets and playwrights of the period were greatly influenced by the Humanists’ renewed interest in classical philosophy, as well as recent scientific and alchemical discoveries. We see these ideas at play—often simultaneously—in the work of Metaphysical poets such as John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Katherine Phillips, and others.
The trademark of the Metaphysical poets was their innovative use of conceits, which are multi-faceted extended metaphors that explore an experience in an uniquely imaginative, often complex way. They were still interested in universal themes, like love and beauty, but they described these themes in oblique and unexpected ways. In ‘The Extasy,’ for example, John Donne (1572-1631) riffs on the Humanist tradition of Neo-platonic love by describing the spiritual union of lovers as an alchemical experiment. In romanticising the ascendence from a physical to spiritual love, Donne uses the imagery of the ‘hermaphrodite,’ to express an ultimate union between individuals. In ‘The Extasy,’ Donne describes the sexual and emotional union of lovers as an alchemical transformation, in which the lovers are physically and spiritually conjoined into one soul:
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love, these mixt soules doth mixe again,
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All of which before was poore, and scant,)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
To ‘advance their state,’ the lovers’ souls must be refined like the elements in an alchemical experiment. As the lovers engage in their sexual act, their hands become ‘firmly cemented’ together and their souls mix so that, by the end of this alchemical transformation, the ‘we’ who has spoken throughout the poem becomes a ‘dialogue of one.’ The act of making love becomes equated to an alchemical transformation, in which two opposites—man and woman—come together to create a perfectly balanced transmuted matter.
Figure 6 & 7: The Creation of the Alchemical Hermaphrodite. Artis auriferae, quam chemiam vocant, volumen secundum (VD16 A 4355). Basileæ. 1593. Page: 291.
By entwining the concept of Neo-platonic love with Alchemy, Donne specifically evokes the image of the Hermaphrodite depicted in Alchemical manuscripts rather than the traditional Neo-platonic union. Unlike traditional examples of Neoplatonic love, in which the unification of souls is represented as a predestined unification of two halves to form a whole, the alchemical hermaphrodite described in ‘The Extasy’ suggests that lovers have some agency in fulfilling their own desires. They need not wait around for their predestined soulmate to become whole again; they have the ability to manufacture this perfect union themselves. Ultimately, they represent the transformation at the heart of alchemy. The individuals are not simply satiated in their physical unity, but are materially transformed through their spiritual experience of love. They reach a state of perfection, that in both scientific belief and iconography, mimics the creation of the ‘rebis’.
Spanning art, science and poetry, the ‘alchemical hermaphrodite’ is a fascinating motif of medieval alchemy, whose impact extended far beyond the premodern period. In exploring the intertextuality of this iconography across European scientific treatises, poetry and art, we have spanned all four flours of the library’s classification system, as well as it’s photographic collection and rare books. Although the Warburg library’s collections have greatly expanded since Warburg’s time, both his and Bing’s classification system proves as insightful for researchers today. As seen in our exploration of the ‘alchemical hermaphrodite’, in a distinctly ‘Warburg-ian’ way, one is encouraged to think across disciplines and time-periods, when exploring the transmission of images and ideas throughout history.
Footnotes:
[1] Ernst Gombrich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (Tokyo: Shobun-sha, 1986), p. 127.
[2] Leah DeVun, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), p. 20.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Five Treatises of the Philosopher’s Stone. Two of Alphonso King of Portugall, as it was written with his own hand, and taken out of his closset, 1652. First edition print can be found within the Warburg Library’s Innes Collection, under the classmark FGH 100.
[5] Trans-Animacies and Premodern Alchemies,” in Medieval Mobilities: Gendered Bodies, Spaces, and Movements, eds. Jane Bonsall, Meagan Khoury, and Basil Arnould Price. The New Middle Ages Series. Palgrave, Feb. 2023.