The Hermetica
Print detail — every line holds at full size

The Alchemical Cabinet

Lambspring, Figure XIV: The Father in His Bed

The old king sweats out the tincture.

Work
from The Book of Lambspring, in the Musaeum Hermeticum
Plate
Decimaquarta Figura
Maker
Lambspring; engraved by Matthäus Merian
Date
1678
Source
Published Frankfurt, 1678 · scan: DPLA via Wikimedia Commons
Decimaquarta Figura

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 lies in a great canopied bed in a quiet room, a window open on the sky. The verse says here the father sweats hard, and the oil and true tincture of the philosophers flow from him. This is the fourteenth figure of the Book of Lambspring, engraved by Matthäus Merian and printed in the Musaeum Hermeticum, Frankfurt, 1678. It is the most domestic of the fifteen plates, a bedroom with the shoes set neatly on the floor.

See it on your wall

The plate, in your home

Lambspring, Figure XIV: The Father in His Bed printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

Lambspring, Figure XIV: The Father in His Bed framed on the wall
Lambspring, Figure XIV: The Father in His Bed framed on the wall
Lambspring, Figure XIV: The Father in His Bed framed on the wall
Lambspring, Figure XIV: The Father in His Bed framed on the wall

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.