Emblem I — The Wind in the Belly

Birth from air: the embryo of the Work borne on the world’s breath.

Work: from Atalanta Fugiens
Plate: Emblema I
Maker: Michael Maier; engraved by Matthäus Merian
Date: 1617
Source: Published Oppenheim, 1617 · scan: Wikimedia Commons

Emblema I

Format

The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

A great striding wind-god carries a small figure curled in his belly, clouds streaming behind — the first emblem of Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens, illustrating the old alchemical line, 'the wind carried him in its belly.' Published in 1617 and engraved with cool precision by Matthäus Merian, the book pairs each of its fifty emblems with an epigram and a three-voice fugue, alchemy set to be read, looked at, and sung at once. The image is deliberately strange: birth from air, the embryo of the work borne on the breath of the world. Maier meant it as a riddle, and left the reader to carry it.

See it on your wall

The plate, in your home

Emblem I — The Wind in the Belly printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

Emblem I — The Wind in the Belly framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from Atalanta Fugiens (1617), held by Published Oppenheim, 1617 · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.

From the same hand