Germany, 1582 copy (text tradition c. 1532–1535)
The Sun Rises Over the City
A golden sun wearing a calm human face climbs over a walled city — the manuscript’s closing image of completion after darkness.
- Work
- Splendor Solis (Splendour of the Sun)
- Artist / creator
- Unknown illuminator (text attributed to Salomon Trismosin)
- Origin & date
- German, 1582 copy (text tradition attributed to Salomon Trismosin, c. 1532–1535)
- Held by
- British Library (Harley MS 3469, f.33v)
Format
The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
Available as a digital download only — this scan’s resolution doesn’t hold up cleanly as a physical print at any size.
$24.00
The story
A golden sun, given a calm human face, climbs over a walled city and a darkened, felled-tree landscape below. It is the closing image of the manuscript’s Fifth and final treatise, the last of the full-page miniatures among the folios digitized here, ending a short run of three: the sun setting over the same city, women washing and drying linen by a stream, and finally this sunrise. Alchemists read the sequence as the Work’s final act compressed into a day, dissolution and darkening, a washing or purification, then a rebirth rendered as literal daybreak, an old habit of borrowing the language of death and resurrection for the Stone’s last transformation. The detail worth noting is the sun’s face itself, individualized and almost portrait-like, the same treatment given to the twin suns on the manuscript’s opening emblem far earlier in the book. That echo brackets the whole cycle, sun to sun, start to finish.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from British Library (Harley MS 3469, f.33v)’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Available as a Gold-Foil Premium Edition — a metallic accent print evoking the illuminator’s gold, for a piece from one of the tradition’s luminous, gilded manuscripts.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.
