The Dragon Devouring Its Own Tail
Michael Maier (author); engraved by Matthäus Merian the Elder
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 10 x 8 in, 63 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyA dragon curls into a closed ring, jaws fastened on its own tail — the ouroboros, one of alchemy’s oldest inherited symbols, here given its most widely reproduced early-modern rendering. The caption is blunt: "Hic est Draco caudam suam devorans," this is the dragon devouring its own tail. Alchemical writers used the figure for a process without a fixed start or finish: matter destroying and consuming itself in order to be renewed, shedding an old skin to acquire a new one along with youth. Atalanta Fugiens was itself a layered object — each of its 50 emblems paired an engraving with a Latin epigram and a three-voice musical fugue, an unusual fusion of image, text, and sound for 1618 — and this plate, endlessly excerpted since in books on symbolism, shows how far one image from it has traveled beyond the volume that made it famous.
- Maker
- Michael Maier (author); engraved by Matthäus Merian the Elder
- Medium of the original
- Engraving
- Original held by
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit
- Wikimedia Commons · via Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Public domain, verified
- Catalogue number
- PA-00510
Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.
| Size | Why |
|---|---|
| 10 x 8 in | 63 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 12 x 8 in | Wrong shape: a 24% crop |
| 14 x 11 in | 45 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 12 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 18 x 12 in | Wrong shape: a 24% crop |
| 20 x 16 in | 31 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 16 in | Wrong shape: a 24% crop |
| 24 x 18 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 30 x 20 in | Wrong shape: a 24% crop |
| 30 x 24 in | 21 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 36 x 24 in | Wrong shape: a 24% crop |
| 40 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 48 x 36 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 60 x 40 in | Wrong shape: a 24% crop |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 630 x 550 px, b-w
- Tone
- Darks 0, lights 251 of 255; 4% clipped light, 7.3% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 1111.69
- Notes
- Pure white on 4% of the image, mostly the sheet itself: it prints as the paper's white
- Shadows clip on 7% of the image: the darkest areas print as solid black
The Alembic
Gold, the sun and the alchemist’s Great Work in eight surviving miniatures.
All 29 pieces from The Alembic
