Article ID: CBB059584968

Citrination and its Discontents: Yellow as a Sign of Alchemical Change (2024)

unapi

Many of the “signs and tokens” described in alchemical texts relate to colour, from the Crow’s Bill signifying putrefaction to the philosophical solvents disguised as Green Lions, Red Dragons, and Grey Wolves. While the process of yellowing, or citrination, often appears in medieval recipes, it seems to have interested commentators less than the more familiar processes of blackening, whitening, or reddening. Yet beyond these canonical colours, yellowness turns out to be ubiquitous in alchemy and its associated craft practices, both in Latin texts and vernacular translations. This paper uses source criticism and experimental reconstruction to interrogate the role of yellowness at the beginning, middle, and end of practice, focusing on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England. As starting ingredients, yellow vitriol and litharge offered the potential for transmutation but also posed problems for identification and preparation. As an intermediate stage, yellowness offered promising signs of future success, in the form of dramatic colour changes and unexpected products. But yellowness also offered an end in itself, as appears from the many citrination processes attested in recipe collections which aimed to imitate the properties of gold – suggesting that yellowing was prized as a significant indicator of chemical change across diverse areas of craft practice.

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Article Marjolijn Bol; Matteo Martelli; Lucia Raggetti; Jennifer M. Rampling (2024) Changing Colour: Yellow Dyes from Antiquity to Early Modernity. Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 1-9). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Rampling, Jennifer M.
Montanari, Giacomo
Bertoloni Meli, Domenico
Bock von Wülfingen, Bettina
DiMeo, Michelle
Gilly, Carlos
Journals
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza
Publishers
Cambridge University
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Centro Di
Manchester University Press
Palgrave Macmillan
University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
Concepts
Alchemy
Color
Chemistry
Formulas; recipes
Dyes
Pigments
People
Ripley, George
Brunfels, Otto
Hermes, Trismegistus
Johannes de Rupescissa
Moritz, Landgraf von Hessen-Kassel
Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim
Time Periods
15th century
16th century
17th century
18th century
Medieval
14th century
Places
England
Rome (Italy)
Germany
Greece
Kassel (Germany)
Strasbourg (France)
Institutions
Marburg. Universität
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