Bananas and Blue Lizard 1705 - 1771

hand-colored-etching, print, engraving

hand-colored-etching

water colours

germany

egg art

print

possibly oil pastel

oil painting

coffee painting

underpainting

painting painterly

watercolour bleed

watercolour illustration

engraving

watercolor

This 18th-century print, "Bananas and Blue Lizard", depicts a vibrant blue lizard and two butterflies, one in flight and the other perched upon a banana. The artist, unknown, captures the details of these tropical creatures in a delicate and precise manner, highlighting the intricate patterns on the wings and scales. The composition is both striking and informative, showcasing the natural world in a manner that is both aesthetically pleasing and scientifically accurate. The work, housed in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, is a testament to the enduring allure of natural history, particularly the exotic and often overlooked wonders of the insect world.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart about 1 year ago

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The owl butterfly, Caligo teucer (Linnaeus), is shown in flight and resting on a kind of banana. Merian recorded, "Both its upper wings are a light ochre color, the other two are a beautiful blue." The identification of the lizard has been the subject of some debate among naturalists; it is now generally believed to be a member of the Cnemidophorus lemniscatus species complex. Merian said that she included the lizard in this watercolor as "decoration." She fondly recalled that it had "built its nest in the floor of my house; in this nest lay four eggs, white and round, like the three to be seen on the stalk. I brought them back with me in the ship to Holland and while we were at sea the baby lizards crawled out of the eggs, as small as the one to be seen on the stalk."