The Emblem Shelf
The Oratory and the Laboratory
A whole philosophy staged as a room you could walk into.
- Work
- from the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae
- Maker
- Heinrich Khunrath
- Date
- 1595
- Source
- Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, 1595 · 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
An alchemist kneels at a draped oratory on one side of the hall and a laboratory bench stands on the other, the whole inscribed with the motto that made the plate famous: on the left, 'pray'; on the right, 'work.' This is the great engraving from Heinrich Khunrath's Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, the 'Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom,' first issued in 1595. It fused devotion and chemistry into a single room, arguing that the Work was as much prayer as furnace. Dense with Hebrew, music, and instruments, it is one of the most elaborate images the tradition produced — a whole philosophy staged as an architectural interior you could walk into.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Oratory and the Laboratory 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 the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (1595), held by Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, 1595 · 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.
