The Celestial Figures
The Monochord of the World
One string, tuned from the clouds.
- 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 single string runs the height of the page, from the earth at the bottom to a cloud at the top, where a hand reaches out to turn the peg. Robert Fludd drew the universe as a monochord in 1617: one string, divided into intervals, each step up the string a step up through the elements and the heavens. The lettered divisions along it are musical ones. It is the most quoted image in the book, and the idea under it is older than Fludd by two thousand years: that the world is in tune.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Monochord of the World 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.
