Oppenheim, Germany, 1617–1618
The Sleeping Hermaphrodite
A single body with two heads lies as if dead beneath a crescent moon — alchemy’s Rebis, waiting for fire to wake it.
- Work
- Atalanta Fugiens, Emblema XXXIII
- 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
Sized to protect print quality — this scan’s resolution supports sizes up to 12x16 cleanly.
$24.00
The story
A recumbent, two-headed nude figure lies outdoors under a crescent moon, motionless as a corpse. The motto is spare: "Hermaphroditus mortuo similis, in tenebris jacens, igne indiget" — the hermaphrodite, like one dead, lying in darkness, needs fire. This is the Rebis (from the Latin res bina, "double thing"), the fused male-and-female body that recurs across alchemical literature as the sign of two contrary natures — commonly glossed as sulfur and mercury, fixed and volatile — united into a single substance. Union alone was not completion: the accompanying text insists this joined body is inert, "dead," until heat is applied to rouse it toward its final, perfected state. The double head is the detail worth lingering on; it marks the figure as still two natures sharing one body, rather than a single new one.
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.
In situ
See it framed
The Sleeping Hermaphrodite composited into real, photographed rooms — choose the room and the frame, see exactly what arrives.
Shown at 12x16" — the largest size this piece’s scan holds full clarity at.
