Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Otto Marseus Van Schrieck and the Art of the Butterfly: A Technical Study of Early Modern Lepidochromy

Otto Marseus Van Schrieck and the Art of the Butterfly: A Technical Study of Early Modern Lepidochromy

Mandrij, V. E.

Hardcover

Series: Studies in Early Modernity in the Netherlands

Art HistoryPainting Instruction

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 9048568838
ISBN13: 9789048568833
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Nov 14 2025
Pages: 378
Language: English
The Dutch painter and naturalist Otto Marseus van Schrieck became famous for an unusual iconography that mixed characteristics of landscape, animal painting, natural history illustration, and still life: the sottobosco paintings. These artworks, which he developed during his voyage to Italy around 1650, represent reptiles, amphibians, and insects in dark forests. To increase the realistic representations of lepidopterans, he pressed the wings of dead specimens onto the paintings to transfer their original colours. The technique of printing butterfly wings, named lepidochromy in this book, was already being used in the sixteenth century and has been documented as a means of conserving and classifying lepidopterans from the eighteenth through twentieth century.

With a strong focus on the techniques and materials involved in making butterfly imprints, this book introduces readers for the first time to the development, uses, and meanings of lepidochromy in the oeuvre of Otto Marseus van Schrieck at the crossroads of art and natural history.

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