The Sun and the Mirror

A huge sun with a face rises behind the rocks, and below it a mirror throws a beam into a waiting flask.

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

Sized to protect print quality — this scan’s resolution supports sizes up to 18x24 cleanly.

$24.00

The story

A huge sun with a human face blazes up from behind a ridge of brown rock, its rays filling the left half of the page, while a man and a woman sit close together on the ground and watch it. Under them the painter draws a working method: a mirror on a stand catches the light of a second, smaller sun and sends one straight yellow beam across the page into a flask on a tripod. A few lines of German verse open page 62. This is the Thesaurus thesaurorum at its most literal. The heat in this operation is daylight concentrated, and the drawing shows exactly how a reader of about 1725 was meant to aim it.

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