Et sic in infinitum
Robert Fludd, 1617
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 8 x 10 in, Wrong shape: a 14% crop. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyA plain black square, edged with the words 'Et sic in infinitum' — 'and so on to infinity' — Robert Fludd's astonishing image of the void before creation, the formless dark from which the cosmos would be drawn. It opens the great history of the two worlds, the Utriusque Cosmi Historia, that Fludd published from 1617. Nothing in the period looks remotely like it: a page that depicts absence itself, four centuries before abstract art would make emptiness a subject. Fludd meant it literally as the pre-created nothing. We hang it for its sheer nerve — a black square that is also a cosmology, the beginning of the world shown as an empty frame.
- Maker
- Robert Fludd
- Date
- 1617
- Medium of the original
- Plate
- Original held by
- Utriusque Cosmi Historia, Oppenheim, 1617 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
- Credit
- Utriusque Cosmi Historia, Oppenheim, 1617 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Public domain, verified
- Catalogue number
- PA-00478
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 |
|---|---|
| 8 x 10 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 8 x 12 in | 112 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 11 x 14 in | Wrong shape: a 12% crop |
| 12 x 16 in | 77 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 12 x 18 in | 74 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 20 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 16 x 24 in | 56 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 18 x 24 in | 51 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 20 x 30 in | 44 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 24 x 36 in | 37 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 40 in | 30 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 36 x 48 in | 25 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 40 x 60 in | 22 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 926 x 1,345 px, srgb
- Tone
- Darks 85, lights 255 of 255; 60.2% clipped light, 0.3% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 355.01
- Notes
- Pure white on 60% of the image, mostly the sheet itself: it prints as the paper's white
- A plain margin is part of the file (9% of an edge): it prints as part of the picture
The Hermetica
The esoteric tradition’s emblems, astrological figures and the old charts of palmistry and phrenology.
All 58 pieces from The Hermetica
