People in the Legends
George Ripley was a 15th-century English alchemist and a canon of the Augustinian priory at Bridlington in Yorkshire. He is said to have studied in Italy and elsewhere in his youth.
He dedicated to King Edward IV The Compound of Alchemy, a poem explaining the secrets of alchemy through the metaphor of twelve gates, and won fame as England’s foremost alchemist. Because of that fame, an alchemical picture scroll made after his death also came to be called the Ripley Scroll.
An art and philosophy from ancient to early modern times that sought to turn base metals such as lead into gold and to make an elixir of immortality. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, it developed in Europe by way of the Islamic world. It never achieved its goals, but its laboratory techniques became the foundation of modern chemistry.
An alchemical picture scroll several meters long named after the 15th-century English alchemist George Ripley. It depicts the making of the philosopher's stone in symbolic pictures of dragons, birds and alchemists, with verses. About twenty copies from the 16th–17th centuries survive.
