During the first half of the 17th century, the depiction of the alchemist in the laboratory became one of the common themes in Dutch and Flemish genre painting. These depictions took different forms: some were satirical, while others showed the alchemist with some seriousness and frequently surrounded by a melancholic atmosphere. Until the middle of the 16th century, the depiction of alchemists and their laboratories was primarily the subject of alchemical and other technological treatises. It is important to compare various examples of the alchemical laboratory’s portrayal in fine art and scholarly works dealing with alchemy or metallurgy. I want to draw attention to the differences in the depictions of the laboratory in both areas and the fundamental difference in the meaning of these depictions themselves. My premise that I would like to verify in this essay I formulate as follows: In the case of depictions in scholarly works, the art is a means of representing a subject of laboratory equipment, in the case of works of genre painting, the topic of laboratory equipment is a means of creating a picturesque work of art.