The Alchemical Cabinet
Lambspring, Figure XIII: The Father Devours the Son
A king swallows his own son.
- Work
- from The Book of Lambspring, in the Musaeum Hermeticum
- Plate
- Decimatertia 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
An old king on his throne bends to swallow his son, while the winged guide stands watching under an arcade. The verse is plain: here the father devours the son, and soul and spirit go out of the body. This is the thirteenth figure of the Book of Lambspring, engraved by Matthäus Merian and printed in the Musaeum Hermeticum, Frankfurt, 1678. It is the darkest scene in the book, and alchemists read it as one stage on the way to the last plate.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Lambspring, Figure XIII: The Father Devours the Son 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
