Oppenheim, Germany, 1617–1618
Go to the Woman Washing Clothes
A washerwoman scrubbing linen becomes, in Maier’s hands, an instruction for how matter is purified.
- Work
- Atalanta Fugiens, Emblema III
- Artist / creator
- Michael Maier (author); engraved by Matthäus Merian the Elder
- Origin & date
- 1617/1618, Oppenheim, Germany — early modern alchemical emblematics
- Held by
- Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
Available as a digital download only — this scan’s resolution doesn’t hold up cleanly as a physical print at any size.
$24.00
The story
The engraving shows an ordinary domestic scene: a woman standing at a tub, pouring water over soiled linen while steam or mist rises around her. The Latin motto below, "Vade ad mulierem lavantem pannos, tu fac similiter" ("Go to the woman washing clothes, and do likewise"), turns the chore into instruction. Alchemists read household labor as a cipher for laboratory process: repeated washing and drying stood for the purification impure matter had to undergo before the Great Work could proceed — dirt lifted from cloth was dross lifted from the prima materia. Look for the vapor curling above the tub, meant to double as laundry steam and the vapors of a heated vessel. It is one of several plates in which Maier grounds abstract chemistry in scenes anyone could recognize.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.
