Courtesy of the Bruce Museum

Peiter Brueghel hurt alchemists' feelings

Alchemy: Magic, Myth or Science?
Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Dr., Greenwich. Tue. - Sat., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sun., 1 to 5 p.m. through Jan. 3. $7; $6 for students and seniors. (203) 869-0376, www.brucemuseum.org

If an air of foolishness hangs around the popular image of an alchemist — a man trying to transform lead into gold — Alchemy: Myth, Magic or Science?, the new show at the Bruce Museum, rights the image. Alchemy is the origin of chemistry, the central science.

This is a fitting show for the Bruce, a museum devoted to both art and science. Alchemy, being about the transformation of matter, encompasses a range of industries and practices: distilling grapes to wine, smelting rock into metal, mixing minerals to create gunpowder and fireworks.

The exhibit reveals the history of alchemy through almost a hundred objects, paintings and a few interactive features. Among the objects are a Tibetan mandala, a Persian wine jug, a Peruvian copper dagger, a Renaissance-era Italian book of recipes, the fragment of a Meissen saucer from Germany and cinnabar from China from which the pigment vermilion is made.

Alchemy is also an ancient philosophy. Egyptian and Arab alchemists modified the ancient Greek notion of the four matters, water, air, fire and earth. In India, philosophers created the concept of five elements, fire, earth, water, air and space. In China, there were water, wood, metal, earth, fire and properties of yin and yang.

Alchemy came to Western Europe in the 12th century with the translation of Arab texts. One idea in particular caught the imagination of the Western alchemists: finding an "elixir of life" that would cure all illness and transform common metals into gold.

The paintings in the exhibit show how alchemists were viewed by society. In 17th century Netherlands, alchemists became a popular subject for genre painters. They often depicted alchemists as fools, possessed by greed, pursuing an obsession that led to poverty. In the painting The Alchemist by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1565-1636), the alchemist's family is led to the poorhouse. But in Interior of a Laboratory (1560) by David Teniers II, the subject is treated as a serious man of science, working in a spacious, well-equipped and staffed room.

Carolyn Rebbet, the Bruce's curator of science, says the paintings illuminate aspects of the life of a scientist: detraction, frustration, discovery and the need for funding.

The exhibit is so rich in objects and covers so much ground, the most erudite will discover something they didn't know before.