Oppenheim, Germany, 1617–1618
Join the Brother and the Sister
Two figures share a cup of love — the alchemical marriage of opposites rendered as a simple family gesture.
- Work
- Atalanta Fugiens, Emblema IV
- 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
Two figures, identified in the text as brother and sister, reach toward one another while a cup passes between them. The motto instructs: "Conjunge fratrem cum sorore, & propina illis poculum amoris" — join the brother with the sister, and pour them a cup of love. In alchemical theory this is the conjunctio, the pairing of opposed principles (commonly glossed as sulfur and mercury, the "masculine" and "feminine" natures within a single substance) that had to unite before a more perfect body could form. Framing that union as siblings drinking together, rather than as strangers, reflects a running idea in the text that the two natures are already kin, drawn from one root. The plate sits early in the book’s sequence, before the more violent emblems of dissolution, establishing union as the process’s first precondition rather than its result.
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.
