The figures in this engraving, all personifications of the four elements, were based on several sketches by painter and printmaker Hendrik Goltzius (1558−1617). In the lower left corner, the muscular male figure of Earth is shown seated, stalks of wheat in his right hand and sporting a crown that culminates in a rocky castle-topped peak. Nearby, Air sits atop a throne of clouds, a chameleon perched on her hand; the creature came to be associated with the element as it was thought to have subsisted only on air. Water wears a crown of shells and a small boat, while she rests her right arm on a basin pouring water and her left foot on a sea monster. Fire, whose hair and headdress resemble flames, strikes flint, dynamically alighting a salamander, a creature thought to be resistant to flame. The idea that the elements, the components from which all matter is composed, comprise air, fire, earth, and water has its origins in the ancient world. The Latin caption, which specifies that God created the four elements, of which all things on earth consist, illustrates the conflation of classical and biblical world orders in the early modern period.
Claire Spadafora Baes
2023