Anatomy of Riches

Spike Bucklow is Professor of Material Culture and Conservation Scientist at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge. He is the author of numerous books on artists’ materials and methods, including The Anatomy of Riches: Sir Robert Paston’s Treasure (Reaktion, 2018).

If any painting can bear examination across the length of a whole book, it is this one, and Bucklow is extraordinarily well placed to delve into its mysteries. He is that rare kind of expert who brings both practical and academic expertise to bear on their topic. As part of the team behind the Treasure’s recent four-year restoration, he knows more about its material composition than almost anyone else, and has looked at it longer and deeper than even the most attentive of art historians can usually claim for their objects . . . It is no surprise that, like his previous books, The Anatomy of Riches is inflected by a combination of technical knowledge and personal insight . . . Like the Treasure, it is jammed with fascinating stuff. - Daily TelegraphWith its strange array of figures and objects, the Paston Treasure is one of the most memorable 17th-century paintings in Britain. Spike Bucklow delves into its enigmas to produce a compelling portrait of the man who commissioned it, and his world. - Apollo Magazine[a] beautiful book . . . Bucklow’s animated, engaging book is linear in structure and much bolder in its reading of fragmentary, complex evidence. He believes that the vision behind The Paston Treasure is all Sir Robert’s – a “heroic aesthetic experiment” to parallel his alchemical experiments in search of the Philosopher’s Stone. Not everyone will be convinced, but at its most sure-footed – especially in discussing the role of pigments in those alchemical experiments – Bucklow’s narrative is a compelling read. - The Art Newspaper"The Paston Treasure" is one of the most remarkable seventeenth century paintings in England. The name of its Dutch artist is lost; but the interests and careers of the man who commissioned it, the Norfolk politician, alchemist and landowner Robert Paston, are as fascinating as the work he helped bring into being. In this superb and wide ranging set of stories, based on unrivaled experience with the making and conservation of the painting, Spike Bucklow ingeniously evokes the many worlds embodied in the strange and surprising collection of curiosity and delights assembled in its complex imagery and the many materials from which it was composed. Ranging in scope from family history and deep philosophical inquiry to personal conflict, exotic travel and the fate of Royalist gentry in the violence of civil war, this book offers an indispensable guide to the cosmos and the culture of early modern England and the wider universes which it desired, studied, collected and brought to life. - Simon Schaffer