Emblem VIII — The Egg and the Sword

A diagram you were meant to hear as well as see.

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

Emblema VIII

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

A man raises a flaming sword over a large egg resting on a table — Emblem VIII of Atalanta Fugiens, 1617, glossing the instruction, 'take the egg and strike it with a fiery sword.' The philosophical egg was alchemy's image for the sealed vessel in which the whole work took place, a little cosmos of shell and white and yolk; the fiery sword, the heat that opens it. Michael Maier set the scene, and Matthäus Merian engraved it with his usual clarity. Like every plate in the book it came with a verse and a fugue for three voices — a diagram you were expected to hear as well as see.

See it on your wall

The plate, in your home

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

Emblem VIII — The Egg and the Sword 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