Sawney Cunningham consulting an astrologer in the latter's museum or cabinet. Etching after W. Jett, ca. 1734.

An episode in the biography of Sawney Cunningham, a Scottish murderer hanged at Leith in 1635. Cunningham, incognito, accompanies his old nurse to the house of the astrologer Peterson in Edinburgh. Peterson foretells that Cunningham will be hanged for the murder of his uncle William Bean. Cunningham is dressed in a tartan suit (indicating a Scotsman). In the centre, the nurse wears a pointed black hat. The astrologer Peterson wears a dressing-gown (morning gown, banyan) and cap of the kind worn by alchemists and fortune-tellers in Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century (Ariane Fennetaux, 'Men in gowns: nightgowns and the construction of masculinity in eighteenth-century England', Immediations, issue 1, 2004)

In the cabinet of a savant: exotic animals are suspended from the ceiling. On the table, two spheres, presumably representing the terrestrial sphere and the celestial sphere. On the window sill, foetuses preserved in vessels, and a statuette of a figure, possibly an écorché. Right, a library: in the left bay, large multi-volume folio publications are kept on their sides, while in the right bay, quarto, octavo and folio books are kept upright on shelves corresponding to their respective heights. Two of the folios are lettered "Lives of ... men", and a third is lettered "Dr Faust"

[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [1734?]

1 print : etching ; image 22.6 x 14.7 cm

Wellcome Collection 47625i