The Celestial Figures
The Dark Centre and the Ring of Flame
A ring of fire around a dark eye.
- Work
- from Utriusque Cosmi Historia
- Maker
- Robert Fludd; published by Johann Theodor de Bry
- Date
- 1617
- Source
- Published Oppenheim, 1617 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A dense black centre sits inside a ring of flames, with a wide band of radiating lines around that: it looks like an eye, or a sun in eclipse. Robert Fludd drew the stages of creation for his history of the macrocosm, printed at Oppenheim in 1617, as round plates like this one, each a cross-section of the world as it came into being. Few books before it had tried to draw an idea this abstract, and fewer did it as boldly.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Dark Centre and the Ring of Flame printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from Utriusque Cosmi Historia (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.
