Christine van Royen

The least esteemed of creatures are often the small, crawling or flying ones. Mosquito’s, lice or toads, rats or wasps were not often represented in the past as main subjects in paintings or drawings, at least by European artists. Books and studies on insects, amphibians, butterflies and sea creatures emerged eventually in the 16th and 17th century, by artists and scientists like Maria Sybilla Merian (1647-1717) and daughters. Merian did various scientific discoveries on the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies, hitherto unknown. She raised caterpillars in her house and represented them with their host plants as well as the butterflies, all painted with many characteristics. What joy is must have brought her to see, discover and document a new and expanding world of creatures, some totally unknown to her.

Today the situation has changed to the extent that the newly discovered from the 17th century are slowly disappearing again. The least esteemed of creatures are starting to fail from this world. And although the small, crawling and flying creatures often live in the near surroundings of human animals, all that is noted about their absence seems to be cleaner windshields. By documenting them today, their presence or absence in our immediate surroundings will be recorded anew.

Dutch artist Hans de Vries created a Book of Dead Animals in 1978 that documented with a micro-emotive approach how animals and humans shared public space and how unfavorable this was for animals. Following his example the least esteemed of creatures were documented from 2023 onwards. Mosquitos were followed by amphibians, scorpions, grasshoppers, butterflies, wasps, bees, a rare stag beetle, sea creatures and more. They were collected for the period of one year and painted just how they were found. Sometimes with limbs missing and in strange postures, as all animals are dead when collected.

These documents of animals raise all sorts of questions about the animals themselves and their habitats, their esteem and their relations with human animals and about the way they are investigated by scientist today. Could these artistic observations improve relations between human and other animals- the ones in our houses and gardens, the toads, frogs, rats, spiders, beetles and so on- and raise attention to their presence and absence?

One reason that artists in the 17th century painted little creatures might have been to show off their skills as artists, more than attractive subjects could. Realistic works about maggots eating dead bodies were made to induce respect for the soul and also to warn the viewer. Memento mori, remember you must die, so you were warned for a life filled only with carnal pleasures.
The bible described plagues as showers of frogs, plagues of locusts, mosquito’s and stinging flies. King Solomon advised to look well at the ant, that has no commander, no overseer or ruler and yet stores its food in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
 
Protestants were told to worship God not in relics and saints but in His works. The observation of Gods creation of nature became an inspiration for many albums and watercolours. ‘Because all creatures great and small are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God, his eternal power and his divinity’ as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1: 20. The lesser esteemed or small creatures were maybe neglected and ignored at times, but as part of Gods creation they could not be despised, as they were all thought to be made with great wisdom and art.
 
In order to study and paint creatures like butterflies but also salamanders and lizards, they were killed and put on pins or caught in nets. The bible instructs respect for animals as they are part of Gods creation, but very often the Holy book is interpreted as giving responsibility for the animal kingdom to human animals and thus, allowing the use of animals in the name of God, art, science or pleasure.
 
Humanity was the final and greatest of Gods creations, that ended with Adam and the creation of human animals. Adam recieved power from God to give animals their name and that settled man’s dominion of the natural worlds. In this way, anthropocentrism was created. The knowledge created through painting Gods creation of bigger and smaller animals was not only a genuine interest of artists, but also confirmed their superiority as human animals. As a result, we see what they saw. But what would animals have seen? How did they see each other?