Experiment II: The Visibility of Comets

This engraving depicts a landscape with a river and small buildings in the distance, viewed from a grassy foreground. On the right, a long, thin spear is driven into the earth; a small, bulbous protrusion labeled 'A' is fixed to the shaft, catching the intense rays of a sun that occupies the upper-left corner of the sky. The sun is rendered with a classic anthropomorphic face, surrounded by radiating lines of light that emphasize the obstruction or illumination of the spear. The composition is clean and focused on this geometric, observational experiment.

This print originates from Robert Fludd's 'Utriusque Cosmi, Maioris scilicet et Minoris, metaphysica, physica, atque technica Historia' (1617), a cornerstone work of the Rosicrucian era that explores the macrocosm and microcosm through natural philosophy and hermetic correspondences.