The Dragon and the Woman

In an underground chamber, a dragon and a woman are locked in mutual destruction, both figures shown covered in blood. The motto: "Draco mulierem, & haec illum interimit, simulque sanguine perfunduntur" — the dragon kills the woman, and she kills him, and together they are drenched in blood. As the fiftieth and final emblem, it closes the book on mutual annihilation rather than triumph, fitting a work that treats death as a recurring stage rather than an endpoint — the fixed and volatile natures destroying each other so that what remains is neither one nor the other. It is a deliberately unresolved note to end on: Atalanta Fugiens never depicts the finished Stone itself, only the cycles of union, death, and purification said to lead toward it, leaving the outcome to the reader’s own furnace.

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-00517