The Bird Above the Earth

A black eagle with a red head crosses mountains and sea, and the flasks below turn red, then black, then clear.

Work: Thesaurus thesaurorum et secretum secretissimum (Wellcome MS 4775)
Artist / creator: Unknown author and illustrator
Origin & date: Probably c. 1725 (catalogue date "[1725?]"); Latin, with additions in German verse
Held by: Wellcome Collection, London (MS 4775)

Format

The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.

Size

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$24.00

The story

A black eagle with a red head flies above yellow mountains and a calm blue sea. The heading is Genesis again, Et volatile super terram sub Firmamento Coeli, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. Below, the painter lines up the stages as labelled glass: a flask of red liquid marked Solutio Vitrioli, a heavier flask with a black base marked for the putrefaction of vitriol, a third left almost empty, and a pair of joined vessels marked Exsiccatio. Page 30 of this Thesaurus thesaurorum is one of its clearest lessons in sequence. The bird is the volatile part rising, and the flasks show what is left behind when it goes.

About this reproduction

Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wellcome Collection, London (MS 4775)’s open-access release.
Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
Color-managed to the source scan.
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Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection, London, licensed CC BY 4.0.

In situ