The Most Beautiful Alchemical Manuscript, by an Unknown Hand

Splendor Solis ("The Splendour of the Sun") is among the most sumptuously illustrated of all alchemical works, a sequence of allegorical paintings that depict the stages of the Great Work through vivid emblematic scenes, the knight of the double fountain, the drowning king, the severed limbs, the flask holding the peacock's tail of colours, and figures of the sun and moon. It is traditionally attributed to Salomon Trismosin, said to be the teacher of Paracelsus, but this is a legendary attribution and the real author is unknown; Trismosin himself may be a fictional persona.

The earliest versions date to about 1532-35 (the oldest is in Berlin), and the most famous illuminated copy, in the British Library (Harley MS 3469), is dated 1582. The text belongs to the German alchemical tradition and draws on earlier sources such as the Aurora Consurgens. Its fame rests less on any distinctive doctrine than on the extraordinary quality of its images, which have made it, in reproduction, the single most recognisable body of alchemical illustration.