The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700

University of Minnesota Press, 2011

“The Insect and the Image is a lucid, engaging study of how early modern artists and naturalists came to see insects as a serious object of study. Going beyond the anachronistic division between art and science, Janice Neri explores what she calls ‘specimen logic:’ how artists’ techniques and the material culture of studying and collecting turned insects into rare, exquisite curiosities that could reveal an exotic new world. At the same time she underscores how those who studied insects used them to define themselves and their place in society.”

–Brian Ogilvie, author of The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe

 

The Insect and the Image explores the ways in which visual images defined the insect as a proper subject of study for Europeans of the early modern period. Revealing how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists and image makers shaped ideas of the natural world, Janice Neri enhances our knowledge of the convergence of art, science, and commerce today.