Alchemy as a symbolic framework in nineteenthcentury Western art: a comparative analysis of Rossetti, Moreau and De Morgan

Abualrob A. O. M., Yavuz S.

ARTS: Artuklu Sanat ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi, sa.16, ss.365-388, 2026 (TRDizin)

Özet

Recent historiography cautions against describing alchemy as a failed science replaced by modern chemistry. Although institutional chemistry gradually separated from alchemical practice during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, alchemical ideas continued to influence occult, literary, and artistic culture. This article examines how alchemical concepts clarify the visual organization of works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Gustave Moreau, and Evelyn De Morgan, representing PreRaphaelitism, Symbolism, and Spiritualist-oriented Symbolism. Using a qualitative comparative approach, the study combines formal analysis, iconographic interpretation, and historical contextualization, distinguishing direct alchemical reference, contextual association, and analogical interpretation. Findings show De Morgan’s strongest explicit engagement through symbolic objects, chromatic structure, and themes of union. Rossetti’s documented language of spiritual transformation supports analogy with the alchemical opus, while Moreau’s Salome cycle reveals affinities with separation, polarity, and visionary transformation. Alchemy thus emerges as a historically situated symbolic framework rather than a uniform hidden code.