The Celestial Figures
The Children of Saturn
A whole sociology drawn down from a single star.
- Work
- from the Medieval Housebook
- Plate
- The Children of Saturn
- Maker
- The Master of the Housebook (attributed)
- Date
- c. 1480
- Source
- Medieval Housebook of Wolfegg Castle · 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
Beneath Saturn, riding his chariot across the top of the sheet, the 'children of the planet' go about the lives their star was said to shape — the old, the poor, the diggers and prisoners and gravekeepers, all born under the coldest and slowest of the planets. The 'Children of the Planets' were a favourite subject of the late fifteenth century; this version follows the celebrated German Housebook of around 1480. Each planet got its own crowded scene of the trades and temperaments it governed — a whole sociology drawn from the sky. Saturn's is the bleakest and, to many eyes, the most human: labour, age, and the earth turned over.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Children of Saturn 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 Medieval Housebook (1480), held by Medieval Housebook of Wolfegg Castle · 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.
