The court alchemist John Dee was depicted in a picture in a circle of skulls

LONDON. In Henry Gillard Glindoni’s painting, “John Dee performing an experiment before Elizabeth I”, experts found mysterious figures hidden from the eyes of a picturesque medieval alchemist and mathematician John Dee layer.

Henry Gillard - John Dee conducts an experiment in front of Queen Elizabeth I

X-ray tomography of this magnificent sample of Victorian art showed that Dee was originally surrounded by human skulls and otherworldly entities, but later the artist hid them.

John Dee, known at one time as the Queen’s Magician, was one of the most unusual Elizabethans, a brilliant Renaissance scientist whose work has inspired thinkers for centuries. Among his followers was Isaac Newton himself. Perhaps it was Dee who became the prototype of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In 1978, Derek Jarman made a film about the alchemist, and in 2011, Dee became the hero of Damon Albarn’s opera.

Curator Katie Birkwood says of John Dee: “He is one of the most interesting and mysterious figures of Tudor England, at the same time a scientist, courtier and magician.”

Photo: National Gallery, London / Wellcome Library

The skulls found in the painting, according to Birkwood, can serve as a metaphor for the entire scene that the artist depicted. We see Queen Elizabeth visiting Dee at his house in Mortlake. To her left is the chief adviser, William Cecil, and her beloved court sir, Walter Raleigh. Immediately behind the figure, Dee is depicted sitting at a table, Edward Kelly, a medium and an alchemist, in a headdress, which he wore in order to hide his cut off ears, probably in punishment for youthful crimes.

An X-ray picture of the painting shows that, according to the original idea of the artist, Dee stood in a circle of human skulls. Why Gildoni painted this part of the canvas is not exactly known, but most likely this was done at the request of the buyer. The artist himself probably wanted to focus precisely on the occult side of John Dee.

John Dee’s life was filled with a variety of events. He was accused of espionage and talking to angels, he studied magic crystals and tried to build a perpetual motion machine. By the way, much later John Dee’s magic stone, which helped him communicate with the other world, fell into the hands of the Russian Empress Catherine II. In 1555, the magician and astrologer was placed under house arrest for compiling royal horoscopes without permission. On the back of one of the books, Dee makes a note of what is in Fulham, in the house of "his special friend" Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. Was he really his friend or follower, a man known as the "Blood Bonner", ruthlessly dealing with heretics?

Birkwood believes that it’s already impossible to find out the truth: “Bonner was a terrible person, but they were both learned people and might have shared interests.”

After himself, John Dee left a library of more than 4,000 volumes, one of the largest in Europe. Unfortunately, almost half of his priceless collection was looted, and what was preserved was presented these days at an exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians in London.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru