The Margarita Pretiosa Novella ("The New Pearl of Great Price") is one of the most remarkable alchemical treatises of the fourteenth century. It was composed in 1330 by Petrus Bonus Lombardus of Ferrara, a physician, and first published in print by Janus Lacinius through the press of Aldus at Venice in 1546. The treatise was subsequently reprinted in Volume V of the Theatrum Chemicum (Strasbourg, 1659-1661). The date of composition, 1330, is accepted by the major historians of alchemy, including Thorndike, Sarton, Ruska, Stillman, and Holmyard. The work is written in Latin and represents the most comprehensive attempt of its era to provide a philosophical and theological defense of the alchemical Art.

The Margarita Pretiosa Novella is a compilatory work in which the fields of believing, thinking, and knowing are brought into relation with alchemy. Petrus Bonus assembles arguments for and against the Art, refuting objections with counter-arguments drawn from Aristotle and Arabic sources. He calls Ovid's Metamorphoses a source that treats the secret of the Philosopher's Stone in an esoteric way. At the heart of the treatise lies an extraordinary passage in which Petrus Bonus declares that the Stone may be compared to all things in the world, tangible and intellectual, encompassing virtues and vices, heaven and earth, visible and invisible things, spirit and soul and body, life and death, war and peace, hell and paradise. The Stone, in this vision, is the universal key that unlocks all knowledge, both natural and supernatural.

Maier valued the Margarita Pretiosa Novella highly. In his Symbola Aureae Mensae (pp. 381-382), Maier discusses Petrus Bonus at length, praising the treatise and particularly the way in which Petrus Bonus handled the concept of philosophical sulphur, a cornerstone of alchemical theory (De Jong, Netherlands Yearbook article, p. 152). Maier also found in Petrus Bonus a kindred spirit: both men were physicians who saw alchemy as continuous with natural philosophy and theology, and both were drawn to the idea that the Philosopher's Stone stood at the intersection of material science and spiritual illumination.

In the Atalanta Fugiens, the influence of the Margarita Pretiosa Novella appears in Emblems XXII and XLVI. Emblem XLVI, depicting the wolf and dog who bite each other and both become furious, includes a motto whose source De Jong traces to an epistle of Rhazes as cited in Petrus Bonus's treatise (De Jong, p. 228). The passage describes how the wolf found in the East and the dog found in the West bite each other, become rabid, and mutually kill each other until both poison and medicine originate from them. This allegory of the union of opposites through mutual destruction connects to the broader theme of the coniunctio that runs through the Atalanta Fugiens. Emblem XXII's treatment of fish and the sea also draws on material that circulated through the compilatory tradition represented by the Margarita.

De Jong's engagement with the Margarita Pretiosa Novella reveals it as a text that shaped the philosophical ambitions of the Atalanta Fugiens. Petrus Bonus's claim that the Stone may be compared to all things in the world anticipates Maier's own project of encoding alchemical knowledge in every available sensory medium. De Jong quotes the key passage from the Margarita at length in her introduction (De Jong, pp. 35-36), positioning it as a statement of the totalizing ambition that defines the alchemical tradition and that Maier's emblem book brings to its fullest expression.

The title of the Margarita Pretiosa Novella itself participates in the tradition of alchemical wordplay: the "precious pearl" is both the treatise and the Stone it describes, a pearl of wisdom that unlocks the greater Pearl. Maier's Atalanta Fugiens, with its golden apples strewn before the racing Atalanta, offers another variation on this theme: each emblem is a golden fruit, precious in itself, but also a delay that allows the pursuing reader to draw closer to the elusive quarry of true understanding.