The Layer Quaternity

The quartet of figurines sculptured in marble, Pax, Gloria, Vanity, Labor exhibit primary thematic concerns and stylistic attributes of Northern Mannerist art, namely, portraiture of animated human movement, variety and multiplicity, often set in the Classical or mythological world, and inclined towards esoteric concepts.

[1] The Layer Quaternity (circa 1598–1604) share a number of iconographical details to a complex illustration found in Alchemia (1606) by the German academic Andreas Libavius in a chapter entitled De Lapide Philosophorum (The Philosopher's Stone) in which two giants support four figures, the lower pair of which are mortal, the upper pair immortal, they form the apex to – "Libavius' monument of the opus.......The completion of the Little Work by Labor and Industry and the grace of God (Latin lower captions translated) is followed by Sol and Luna ascending on swan's wings.....the thanksgiving by the Arab king and his white wife reading as – Glory to God on High and I will exalt thee my God ".

Luke 2 v.14 The Layer Quaternity also corresponds to the alchemical 'deities' Apollo, Luna, Mercurius and Vulcan as named in emblem XVII of Atalanta Fugiens (1617) by the German alchemist-physician Michael Maier.

Collectively they exemplify how Christian iconography during the era of Elizabeth I, in tandem with Renaissance Europe, integrated symbolism from the western esoteric traditions of alchemy and astrology into works of art, including the funerary monument.

To Jung the quaternity was a natural expression of differentiation which always represents a totality, citing the four elements, the four seasons, the ancient Greek schemata of the four humours, and the four temperaments, as well as the four Evangelists with their respective emblems in the form of the tetramorph in Christian iconography, as examples.