Frankfurt, 1550 (this selection also draws on a 1610 Basel reprint)
The Fountain of Mercury
A three-spouted fountain crowned by sun and moon opens the Rosarium’s twenty-plate meditation on transformation.
- Work
- Rosarium Philosophorum
- Artist / creator
- Unknown (anonymous woodcut artist)
- Origin & date
- Text first printed Frankfurt, 1550; this scan is the 1610 Basel reprint (Artis Auriferae, quam chemiam vocant)
- Held by
- SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library)
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
The opening woodcut shows a tiered fountain inside a walled garden, its rim ringed by six-pointed stars, sun and moon looking down from above. Three streams fall from one spout, labeled lac virginis (virgin’s milk), acetum fontis (fountain’s vinegar), and aqua vitae (water of life) — three names alchemists gave to mercury, the substance they held to be both starting material and universal solvent of the Great Work. The verse beneath, signed "Mineralis," has the fountain speak in its own voice: no ordinary spring, but a thing that heals, enriches, poisons, and kills by turns. As the sequence’s first image, it sets up the fountain as the shared source from which the King and Queen of the following plates will shortly emerge.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library)’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.
Image courtesy of SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library), Public Domain Mark 1.0.
In situ
See it framed
The Fountain of Mercury 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.
