Hermit VS Hermeticism Hermits and the Hermetic Tradition in European Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

DOI

10.2991/icassee-18.2018.71How to use a DOI?

Keywords

garden hermitage; architecture; iconography; Hermetic Tradition; hermit; Ermitorium; Natural Philosophers; tarot cards; philosopher’s study; František Antonín Špork; Queen Caroline

Abstract

The article focuses on the prehistory of garden “hermitages” and their direct connection with the cult of hermits and seventeenth-century hermeticist philosophers endowed with esoteric knowledge. By tracing the iconography of hermits in painting, literature and the Taro cards and analyzing the reasons for their popularity, the author demonstrates the affinity, characteristic of the seventeenth century, between the image of a recluse and not so much Christian recluse philosophers as magi and natural philosophers who were privy to “secret knowledge”. It was their secluded abodes full of books and instruments to study nature, as well as alchemist laboratories, that served as a model for the early high-society “recluses” who built hermitages on their estates as the so-called “philosophical studies” that were indeed intended for secluded studies or merely symbolized that the owner embraced the hermeticist tradition.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Anna Korndorf
PY  - 2018/12
DA  - 2018/12
TI  - Hermit VS Hermeticism Hermits and the Hermetic Tradition in European Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 345
EP  - 351
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icassee-18.2018.71
DO  - 10.2991/icassee-18.2018.71
ID  - Korndorf2018/12
ER  -