Oppenheim, Germany, 1617–1618
The Woman at the Furnace
A woman tends pots at the hearth — kitchen labor standing in for the alchemist’s own slow work over fire.
- Work
- Atalanta Fugiens, Emblema XXII
- 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 places a woman over a fireplace, working vessels set to heat, in a scene that could pass for an ordinary seventeenth-century kitchen. The motto reframes it: "Plumbo habito candido fac opus mulierum, hoc est, Coque" — having obtained white lead, do the work of women, that is, cook. The discourse that follows draws the parallel explicitly, comparing the alchemist’s handling of matter in a sealed vessel to a woman softening and stewing food over controlled heat. Assigning this stage to female domestic labor was a common device in the literature, casting a patient, moderate kind of heat-work — neither the violent fire of smelting nor an instant transformation — as the model to imitate. The homely fireplace at the emblem’s center is a useful corrective to the idea that alchemical imagery was all robed philosophers and dragons; much of it was borrowed straight from the household.
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.
