Cornelis Bega, The Alchemist, 1663.
(Oil on panel, 35.6 x 31.8) Los Angelos, The J.Paul Museum.
The 17th-century Dutch painting I have chosen was by Cornelis Bega, the title is "The Alchemist".
There are a quirky feeling about this painting, with a dark emotion and a sense of mysterious. I then came up with the following narrative :
A mysterious, quirky middle-aged alchemist lives in the middle of a swamp, looking for the unreachable life eternity.
There are two main goals for the alchemists : life eternity and to turn things into gold. In the past centuries, alchemists were considered as dark magic, thus, the rooms of my design are mostly enclosed with small windows, creating darkness to the whole space. From my viewing point, the process of looking for life eternity is similar to wandering around in a labyrinth, so I put complex walls into the space and level changes which create the feeling of a journey. Yet, the scale of the model is 1:100 which is huge, the spaces appearing to be very generous and large. However, this is actually the atmosphere I wanted to create, emptiness and loneliness.
The windows are getting less while the alchemist moves up, this indicates when people trying to gain power and money, their minds get darker and uglier . Although there are very little windows, there are always lights coming through the corner of the walls leading him to turn when he needs to.
The highest level is the transmutation room, I have a skylight for him to get the moonlight while he is mixing his ingredients. The room is the last place he would reach, no matter how hard he works, he cannot achieve more than that, meaning life eternity is something that people can never reached.
Some rough sketches while I was developing the ideas :
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