Historical Background

Here you will find links to websites about some of the topics and historical periods mentioned in The Alchemist’s Portrait. Please be sure to let me know if any of these links are no longer operative.

The cover illustration for The Alchemist's Portrait was based on a famous painting. This is the ‘Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife’ (1434) by Jan van Eyck and you can take a closer look at it by clicking here.

At the same link you can use the artist index to view another famous painting mentioned in the novel, 'The Laughing Cavalier' by Frans Hals (1624), and the painting entitled 'Banquet of the Officers of the St Hadrian Civic Guard Company (c. 1627)', also by Frans Hals, will give you a good impression of how people dressed in seventeenth century Amsterdam. One of the figures in the painting was also the inspiration for Nicolas van der Leyden, the villain in The Alchemist's Portrait .

Early Seventeenth Century Amsterdam is covered at this website.

You can learn more about the French Revolution at these websites:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C006257/default.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/

The Russian Revolution is covered here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_of_1917
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0005600.html

There are lots of sites devoted to the American Civil War, but here are two interesting links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_war
http://americancivilwar.com/

A history of alchemy is the subject of this site.

A History of Alchemy