Oppenheim, Germany, 1617–1618
The Dragon and the Woman
The book’s final emblem: a dragon and a woman kill each other in a shared grave, drenched in one another’s blood.
- Work
- Atalanta Fugiens, Emblema L
- 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 8x10 cleanly.
$24.00
The story
In an underground chamber, a dragon and a woman are locked in mutual destruction, both figures shown covered in blood. The motto: "Draco mulierem, & haec illum interimit, simulque sanguine perfunduntur" — the dragon kills the woman, and she kills him, and together they are drenched in blood. As the fiftieth and final emblem, it closes the book on mutual annihilation rather than triumph, fitting a work that treats death as a recurring stage rather than an endpoint — the fixed and volatile natures destroying each other so that what remains is neither one nor the other. It is a deliberately unresolved note to end on: Atalanta Fugiens never depicts the finished Stone itself, only the cycles of union, death, and purification said to lead toward it, leaving the outcome to the reader’s own furnace.
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 Dragon and the Woman composited into real, photographed rooms — choose the room and the frame, see exactly what arrives.
Shown at 8x10" — the largest size this piece’s scan holds full clarity at.
