The Bath and the Ring of Fire

An armed figure with a red banner rides a cloud above two bathers, and a flask stands inside a ring of flame.

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

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Size

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$24.00

The story

An armed figure with a spear and a red banner rides a cloud at the top of page 58, and rays fall from it onto a wooden tub where two bathers sit up to their shoulders in water. A German couplet across the head of the page names the pair in the bath. Below, the scene turns into a diagram: a single flask stands in the centre of a ring of small flames, and two faces in the clouds on either side blow their breath across it. In the Thesaurus thesaurorum the royal bath was the place where two opposed substances were joined. The painter gives the reader two kinds of heat on one sheet, the sun's from above and the fire's from around.

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