The Winged Child at the Bath

A winged child sits in a tub beside a stone oven with its door open to the fire, while a dark ball falls from the sky.

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 winged child sits on the rim of a wooden tub in front of a stone building, its arched door open to a fire inside, and a dark ball falls toward it out of a smoky sky. A few lines of German verse are written above and below the scene, one of the additions in German that the Wellcome catalogue notes among the Latin. Beneath, the same idea is drawn as hardware: a brick furnace burning, a glass vessel on top, a retort to one side and a receiving flask to the other. In this Thesaurus thesaurorum the bath stands for gentle, wet heat. The detail worth finding is the bench placed against the oven wall, a small domestic touch in a page about fire.

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.
Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.

Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection, London, licensed CC BY 4.0.

In situ