Frankfurt, 1550 (this selection also draws on a 1610 Basel reprint)
The Meeting of Sol and Luna
A crowned king and queen, standing on the sun and moon, join hands beneath a dove bearing a flowering branch.
- Work
- Rosarium Philosophorum
- Artist / creator
- Unknown (anonymous woodcut artist)
- Origin & date
- 1550, Frankfurt (De Alchimia opuscula complura veterum philosophorum)
- Held by
- Wellcome Collection, London
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
Two crowned, fully clothed figures reach toward each other across a flowering branch held aloft by a dove: a king standing on a radiant sun-face, a queen on a crescent moon. Alchemists read this as the personified meeting of Sol and Luna — gold and silver, sulphur and mercury, the fixed and volatile principles that had to be brought into right relationship before any transformation could begin. The dove overhead marks the encounter as sanctioned rather than merely erotic, and the flowers passing hand to hand stand for the "tincture" the whole work aims to produce. Both figures still wear their royal robes here — nothing has yet been surrendered. The plate marks courtship, not union, the necessary first contact between opposites in a sequence that will only fully join them several plates later.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wellcome Collection, London’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 the Wellcome Collection, London, licensed CC BY 4.0.
In situ
See it framed
The Meeting of Sol and Luna 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.
