Even among positive representations of alchemy, Wijck's painted laboratories offer a novel vision of the art. Though serious and skilled, Wijck’s alchemist-artisans are not in the employ of a prince or leading a team of dozens, as shown in sixteenth-century images by Stradanus, or certain works by Wijck's Flemish contemporary Teniers. Instead, Wijck's alchemists typically inhabit hybrid domestic-experimental spaces, places that serve as both workshop and family home: a scenario intimately recognizable to countless other early modern artisans, including metalsmiths and textile workers, but also artists. His practitioners sit comfortably astride the multiple identities of master, teacher, parent, scholar, and chymist. Wijck was also highly concerned with materials: both the alchemists’ and his own. But by omitting references to gold-making, he largely sidesteps the themes of greed and duplicity found in popular depictions of alchemical fraud and failure. Rather than highlighting coins or crucibles, he focuses on colored powders and raw matter that closely resemble pigments, dyestuffs, and other practical goods manufactured by chemical work. The respectability, harmony, and productivity of Wijck's alchemical workrooms re-imagines the curious space of the laboratory within the context of the familiar, as well as socially and economically vital, artisanal workshop. While Wijck’s pictures may not strike a contemporary audience as “modern,” their turn away from visual convention towards a new representation of urban artisanal life would have marked them as such for their period viewers.