Immersion in the Bath

The same royal pair, now nude, sit in a fountain-shaped stone bath, a dove hovering above with a sprig held between their hands; the margin labels the page Speculum, "mirror." Alchemists treated undressing and shared bathing as the necessary step before conjunction: the two principles first had to be stripped of their outward, worked forms and returned to a common, unformed state — dissolved, in the technical sense — before they could be recombined. The bath’s water echoes the fountain’s mercurial water from the opening plate, signaling that this dissolving happens in the same solvent the whole work began with. Their still-separate postures, hands just meeting at center, mark this as preparation rather than union — the picture immediately before conjunction, and a rare surviving page from this exact 1550 print run.

Maker

Unknown (anonymous woodcut artist)

Medium of the original

Woodcut

Original held by

Wellcome Collection, London

Credit

Wellcome Collection, London · via Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-00519