The Emblem Shelf
Title Page, Oedipus Aegyptiacus
Oedipus answers the sphinx.
- Work
- from Oedipus Aegyptiacus
- Maker
- Cornelis Bloemaert after Giovanni Angelo Canini, for Athanasius Kircher
- Date
- 1652–1654
- Source
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam · 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
Oedipus stands with his hand raised, answering, while the sphinx crouches on her rock and figures in the clouds look on. Cornelis Bloemaert engraved the scene after a drawing by Giovanni Angelo Canini as the title page of Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus, printed in Rome from 1652. Kircher, a Jesuit, believed he had solved the riddle of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and he cast himself as Oedipus to say so. He was wrong about the hieroglyphs. The plate is still one of the finest title pages of the century.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Title Page, Oedipus Aegyptiacus 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 Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652), held by Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam · 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.
