The Emblem Shelf
Et sic in infinitum
The beginning of the world, shown as an empty frame.
- Work
- from Utriusque Cosmi Historia
- Maker
- Robert Fludd
- Date
- 1617
- Source
- Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 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 plain black square, edged with the words 'Et sic in infinitum' — 'and so on to infinity' — Robert Fludd's astonishing image of the void before creation, the formless dark from which the cosmos would be drawn. It opens the great history of the two worlds, the Utriusque Cosmi Historia, that Fludd published from 1617. Nothing in the period looks remotely like it: a page that depicts absence itself, four centuries before abstract art would make emptiness a subject. Fludd meant it literally as the pre-created nothing. We hang it for its sheer nerve — a black square that is also a cosmology, the beginning of the world shown as an empty frame.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Et sic in infinitum 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 Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 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.
