ABSTRACT
This book examines the influences on Renaissance art of magic: not the spells and curses of popular imagination, but a philosophical outlook which animated human attempts to control nature. This philosophy of nature sought to harness the powers of the natural world and, having discovered its secrets, to symbolise them, principally in the form of hieroglyphs and emblems, although traditional art-forms such as painting and architecture were also thought to imitate nature by embodying aspects of this intellectual magic. This philosophy and its hieroglyphics were understood to enshrine the truths of an ancient religion originating in Egypt but considered compatible with Christianity. However, because of its inherently supernatural quest, both intellectual and practical magic were frequently charged with having a demonic aspect, the black, as opposed to the white, art. Since lines were blurred between these two, Renaissance theorists such as Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) and the contemporary alchemical doctor Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1490-1541), sought to distinguish demonology, witchcraft, and the like, from white magic in its philosophical, or intellectual, forms.
