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Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Hover to magnify, click for fullscreen
Original fileAurora consurgens zurich 012 f-5v-12 sower
The central figure is a young person dressed in a white tunic and a pale pink mantle, shown walking toward the right while scattering small yellow, coin-like seeds from their left hand. To the right, a crowned head rises from a reddish, rounded pot that sits directly on top of licking orange-red flames. The background is a solid deep blue, punctuated by two stylized green trees on rocky outcrops flanking the scene. The overall style is that of a medieval manuscript illumination, characterized by flat spatial depth and symbolic, rather than naturalistic, representation.
This image appears in the 'Aurora Consurgens', an alchemical treatise often attributed to Pseudo-Aquinas, and utilizes agricultural imagery to depict the transmutation process. The sower represents the alchemist or the active principle, while the crowned head in the furnace symbolizes the 'King' or the perfected substance undergoing the transformative heat of the alchemical work.
Aurora Consurgens
This image is an illumination from the 15th-century alchemical manuscript 'Aurora Consurgens'.
Object
illumination
parchment
Medieval
German
manuscript-illumination
Digital Source
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
1538 × 1042 px
Linked Data
AI AI-cataloged fields generated by gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview on April 20, 2026. Getty identifiers are AI-inferred and may require verification.