Detail of the “Black Page” from Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia. [Robert Fludd]
Black has repeatedly been associated with solid and geometric forms. The best known example dates back to the early seventeenth century in a page within volume one of Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica. (1617)
The image, a black square, is presented in the context of a metaphysical iconography of the infinite. Each of the four sides of the square (slightly distorted so that it looks more like a rhombus) is marked with the same words: ‘Et sic in infinitum’.
For Fludd, this image was nothing less than a representation of the prima materia, the beginning of all creation.