The Alchemical Cabinet
Lambspring, Figure X: The Salamander in the Fire
A salamander lives in the fire.
- Work
- from The Book of Lambspring, in the Musaeum Hermeticum
- Plate
- Decima Figura
- Maker
- Lambspring; engraved by Matthäus Merian
- Date
- 1678
- Source
- Published Frankfurt, 1678 · scan: DPLA via 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 man tends a roaring fire with a long tool, smoke rising behind him, and in the flames lies a salamander. The verse says the salamander lives in the fire, and the fire changes it to the finest colour. This is the tenth figure of the Book of Lambspring, engraved by Matthäus Merian for the Musaeum Hermeticum, Frankfurt, 1678. The salamander was the old emblem of what survives fire, and the engraving makes the heat almost visible.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Lambspring, Figure X: The Salamander in the Fire 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 Book of Lambspring, in the Musaeum Hermeticum (1678), held by Published Frankfurt, 1678 · scan: DPLA via 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.
From the same hand
