The First Key
Matthaeus Merian the Elder, engraver (text attributed to Basilius Valentinus), Late 17th century; text tradition traced to ca. 1599
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 10 x 8 in, 146 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyA crowned king with a scepter and a crowned queen holding a flowering branch stand facing each other in an open landscape with a walled town behind them. At the king’s feet a wolf leaps across a burning crucible; near the queen a gaunt, stooped old man labors over his own small fire with a scythe close by. Readers of the period took the king and queen as the two chief principles that had to be brought together to begin the Great Work, commonly glossed as gold and a purifying agent. The leaping wolf was a standing cipher for antimony ore, used to strip impurities from gold before any union could occur. Opening the sequence, this plate sets the king-and-queen pairing that recurs, transformed, through all eleven keys that follow.
- Maker
- Matthaeus Merian the Elder, engraver (text attributed to Basilius Valentinus)
- Date
- Late 17th century; text tradition traced to ca. 1599
- Medium of the original
- Engraving
- Original held by
- Science History Institute, Philadelphia
- Credit
- Science History Institute, Philadelphia · via Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Public domain, verified
- Catalogue number
- PA-00525
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 | 146 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 12 x 8 in | 132 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 14 x 11 in | 106 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 12 in | 97 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 18 x 12 in | 88 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 20 x 16 in | 73 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 16 in | 66 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 18 in | 65 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 20 in | 52 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 24 in | 48 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 36 x 24 in | 44 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 40 x 30 in | 39 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 48 x 36 in | 32 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 60 x 40 in | 26 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 1,586 x 1,172 px, srgb, c2
- Tone
- Darks 42, lights 215 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0.4% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 35.75
- Notes
- Neutrals lean toward magenta: the paper and varnish of the original, kept as scanned
The Alembic
Gold, the sun and the alchemist’s Great Work in eight surviving miniatures.
All 29 pieces from The Alembic
