The De Lapide Philosophico Libellus (Little Book on the Philosopher's Stone) is an alchemical emblem book attributed to Lambsprinck, a German alchemist about whom virtually nothing is known beyond this single work. The text pairs symbolic engravings with verse explanations and brief prose elucidations, creating a visual-textual program that encodes the stages of the alchemical work through animal and natural imagery. The first printed illustrated edition appeared in Frankfurt in 1625 with engravings by Matthaeus Merian the Elder, the same engraver who produced the plates for Maier's Atalanta Fugiens, though the text itself circulated in manuscript form considerably earlier.

Lambsprinck's emblems employ a distinctive symbolic vocabulary centered on pairs of animals and natural phenomena. Two fishes swimming in the sea represent spirit and soul within the body. A deer and a unicorn in a forest represent the fixed and volatile principles that must be united. Two birds, one winged and one wingless, represent the same volatile-fixed dynamic through avian imagery. A wolf and a dog represent the final stage of the work in which two contrary natures devour one another. A salamander bathing in fire represents the incombustible nature of the perfected stone. Each emblem moves from visual image through verse to prose explanation, gradually revealing the chemical process encoded in the allegorical scene.

De Jong and Walter Pagel identify Lambsprinck's emblem book as a key prototype for Maier's method of encoding alchemical doctrine in pictorial form. The relationship between the two works is extensive. Emblem VII of the Atalanta Fugiens, depicting a winged and wingless bird that must be bonded together, draws on Lambsprinck's emblem of the two birds, sharing not only the visual motif but the underlying chemical teaching that the volatile spirit must be fixed to the corporeal body. Emblem L's dragon and woman motif corresponds to Lambsprinck's wolf and dog emblem. The salamander of Lambsprinck's emblems reappears in Maier's emblem sequence in nearly identical form.

De Jong is careful to note that the question of direct dependence is complicated by the dating of the illustrated edition. Since no illustrated Lambsprinck text from before 1625 is known, and the Atalanta Fugiens appeared in 1617, Maier's dependence on Lambsprinck can be established only through textual correspondences, not through visual ones. The engravings in the 1625 Lambsprinck were produced by Merian, who had also engraved the Atalanta Fugiens plates, raising the possibility of reverse influence. However, De Jong establishes textual dependence through Maier's use of Lambsprinck's verse and prose explanations in his discourses.

Lambsprinck's De Lapide Philosophico represents a crucial link in the chain of alchemical emblem literature that extends from the illustrated manuscripts of the Rosarium Philosophorum and the Aurora Consurgens through Maier's Atalanta Fugiens to the later illustrated alchemical works of the seventeenth century.

For the modern reader, Lambsprinck's emblem book provides the most accessible point of comparison for understanding Maier's visual method. Where Lambsprinck uses simple, direct animal symbolism with brief explanations, Maier expands the form into a five-part multimedia structure with extended discourses. Comparing the two illuminates both the conventions of the alchemical emblem tradition and Maier's distinctive innovations within it.