A golden sun, given a calm human face, climbs over a walled city and a darkened, felled-tree landscape below. It is the closing image of the manuscript’s Fifth and final treatise, the last of the full-page miniatures among the folios digitized here, ending a short run of three: the sun setting over the same city, women washing and drying linen by a stream, and finally this sunrise. Alchemists read the sequence as the Work’s final act compressed into a day, dissolution and darkening, a washing or purification, then a rebirth rendered as literal daybreak, an old habit of borrowing the language of death and resurrection for the Stone’s last transformation. The detail worth noting is the sun’s face itself, individualized and almost portrait-like, the same treatment given to the twin suns on the manuscript’s opening emblem far earlier in the book. That echo brackets the whole cycle, sun to sun, start to finish.

Maker: Unknown illuminator (text attributed to Salomon Trismosin)
Date: 1582 copy
Medium of the original: Plate
Original held by: British Library
Credit: British Library · via Wikimedia Commons
Rights: Public domain, verified
Catalogue number: PA-00507

As chosen: 8 x 12 in, art print, classic frame
Picture	8 x 12 in
Outside size	9.6 x 13.6 in
Depth	0.9 in (22 mm)
Weight	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: shipped weight per size and frame]]
Hanging	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: hanging hardware Prodigi fits to this frame]]
Material	Enhanced matte art paper, 200 gsm; acrylic glazing
Made in	Charlotte, North Carolina, by Prodigi

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.

How the print check works

Sizes offered
Size	dpi	Grade	How it fits
8 x 12 in	166	Good	Trimmed 4.4%

Sizes withheld
Size	Why
8 x 10 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
11 x 14 in	Wrong shape: a 11% crop
12 x 16 in	115 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
12 x 18 in	110 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
16 x 20 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
16 x 24 in	83 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
18 x 24 in	77 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
20 x 30 in	66 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
24 x 30 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
24 x 36 in	55 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
30 x 40 in	46 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
36 x 48 in	38 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
40 x 60 in	33 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged

Scanned: 2026-10-07
Master file: 1,390 x 1,994 px, srgb
Tone: Darks 59, lights 206 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0% clipped dark
Colour: 0% vivid
Sharpness: 10.15