After Splendor Solis, watercolours by Edith A. Ibbs, 1900 to 1909
Edith Annie Ibbs painted these for Henry Wellcome's Historical Medical Exhibition around 1907, copying the Splendor Solis manuscript of 1582 now in the British Library as Harley MS 3469. She cut each figure out of its page: the manuscript sets its flasks in gilt niches with a planet driving over each one and a scene of ordinary life underneath, and none of that is here. What is here is decoded from the book itself, in J. K.'s English of 1920, which describes all twenty-two pictures one at a time and then, fifty pages later, gives the order the colours have to arrive in.
The Sun and the Moon over the King and the Queen
The Peacock in the Flask
The Three-Headed Monster in the Flask
The Hermetic Androgyne
The adept with the flask of the four elements
The young king with the sceptre of seven stars
The winged queen holds out a robe to the black man
The man in the boiling bath with the dove on his head
The child pouring the black flask down the dragon
The three-headed bird in the crowned flask
The queen in the crowned flask
The red king in the crowned flask
The black sun over the blighted country