ABSTRACT
Chapel of the Planets of 'influence*. But there is one connecting link which is all-important. This is the philosophy of Aristotle which, so far as it was known, dominated later medieval thought. Aristotle considered the stars to be made of a quintessential element, and the sublunary world to be made of combinations and permutations of the four elements, fire, air, earth and water. The medieval and Renaissance image for permutations was of something liquid. The essences distilled in retorts by medieval doctors, the aqua vitae for which they searched, the transmutation of metals that was demanded from the boiling cauldron, reflect this image of change through transfusion. The very influence of the stars upon the fates of men was imagined as a suctional force to which bodies must respond: and so far as concrete things were thought vital, they too would incorporate in their mass tumultuous waves that were the images of life and movement. From this side of medieval image, we again see the connection between stone and water. In Quattro Cento sculpture the four elements exert their powers upon one another and change their attributes; or man expresses his new abundant vigour by giving them in charge to uproarious putti who ransack the surfaces of the stone.
