This illumination from Hildegard von Bingen's Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works), composed between 1163 and 1173, is among the most reproduced of the visionary illustrations the abbess produced to accompany her theological writings. The image shows a cosmological diagram in which the human figure is positioned within concentric circles of the elements — fire, air, water, earth — encircled by a divine figure embracing the whole. Hildegard described these as records of her visions, which she experienced from early childhood and dictated to a secretary across her life.

Hildegard (1098-1179) was a Benedictine abbess, composer, theologian, natural philosopher, and visionary writer who founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg and Eibingen on the Rhine. Her output is unparalleled for a 12th-century woman: three major theological works (Scivias, Liber Vitae Meritorum, Liber Divinorum Operum), a corpus of about 70 musical compositions (the largest surviving repertory of any pre-modern named composer), a medical encyclopedia (Physica), a play (Ordo Virtutum), and an enormous correspondence including letters to popes, emperors, and abbots across Latin Christendom.

Hildegard was formally canonized as a saint by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and named a Doctor of the Church the same year — only the fourth woman in history to receive that title. The illuminated manuscript pictured is held at the Biblioteca Statale di Lucca; the original autograph is presumed lost, but the 13th-century Lucca copy is the closest surviving reproduction of Hildegard's intended program. The Liber Divinorum Operum is one of the foundational texts of medieval mystical-philosophical literature.