Salomon Trismosin; The Sun's Splendour, watercolour.

Unknown artist

A black man with a red head and right arm emerges from cloacal depths into a landscape where a winged woman is waiting for him with a red garment; representing the transformations of the alchemical Great Work from the black stages of material corruption through to the final red stage of perfection; from Salomon Trismosin's 'Splendor solis'. Watercolour painting. Salomon Trismosin's celebrated treatise 'Splendor solis' (The Sun's Splendour) dates back to 1532. A version dated 1582, from which these watercolours (frame nos. 26078-26091) are copied, is held at the British Library (Harley ms. 3469) Lennep quotes the original text, which describes "un être condamnée aux cruels supplices d'un cloaque, paraissait aussi noir qu'un Maure, n'épargnant rien de ses forces pour délivrer son corps condamné aux infectes prisons de ce bourbier fangeux et plein d'immondices. Comme chacun restait sourd à sa complainte, il n'aspirait plus qu'à la Parque inhumaine, lorsqu'une jeune beauté plein d'humanité, vint à son secours." As well as being called a "moor" in this text, other alchemical texts refer to the figure as an Ethiopian (see Lennep, op. cit. p. 119). The text goes on to tell how the woman clothes the man in the robe, lifts him up and takes him with her to heaven. Translation; "a being condemned to the cruel cloacal depths of torture, looking as black as a Moor, trying with all his might to extract his body condemned to the infected prison of this miry quagmire of filth. As everyone was deaf to his cries, he had no hope but to succumb to this inhuman fate, when a beautiful young woman, full of humanity came to his rescue"