Frankfurt, 1550 (this selection also draws on a 1610 Basel reprint)
The Rosarium
A king and queen, twenty woodcuts, and the alchemical marriage from courtship to gold.
The Rosarium Philosophorum tells the Great Work as one continuous story in twenty woodcuts: a king and queen meet at a fountain, undress, unite, die, and rise again as a single crowned, winged body. Its stark black-and-white printmaking — a deliberate contrast to Splendor Solis’s gold — became the most widely copied visual sequence in the alchemical corpus, still cited by scholars of symbolism today. This selection draws on both the original 1550 Frankfurt sheets and a 1610 Basel reprint.
The Fountain of Mercury
SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library)
The Meeting of Sol and Luna
Wellcome Collection, London
Immersion in the Bath
Wellcome Collection, London
Coniunctio sive Coitus
Wellcome Collection, London
Conceptio seu Putrefactio
SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library)
Extraction of the Soul
SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library)
Ablutio vel Mundificatio
SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library)
Perfectionis Ostensio — The Rebis Crowned
SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library)