Ripley Scroll — Huntington Library, mssHM 30313

The story

Six parchment membranes, stitched into a roll over ten feet long, carry 196 lines of English verse and four large ink-and-watercolor scenes. In the third, the strangest image in the set: a white bird, the "bird of Hermes," stands on a floating globe eating its own wing. Alchemists read the self-consuming bird as a picture of circulation — the same substance repeatedly distilled and recombined into itself, refined by feeding on its own volatile part. Nearby, a fourth scene shows a green dragon spitting a frog from its mouth above a fire where the "Red Lyon" and the "Grene Lyon" warm their paws — sulphur and mercury, still being reconciled. The scroll closes with a king and a pilgrim, likely meant as Ripley himself, holding the final verses. Purchased from the Dyson Perrins estate in 1958, it is rated among the finest-painted Ripley copies known.