How Flemish Renaissance Artist Joris Hoefnagel Painted Insects In Vivid Colors with Lifelike Detail

Video essayist Evan Puschak of The Nerdwriter took a look at Flemish Renaissance artist Joris Hoefnagel, noting how, in “The Four Elements”, Hoefnagel fully embraced nature by portraying insects in vivid colors with lifelike detail. This provided scientists of the time with truly accurate depictions of each specimen, as microscopes had not yet been invented.

Hoefnagel isn’t cutting corners here. he’s taking pains to achieve precise detail… He brought a natural historian’s spirit of investigation categorization and discovery to painting he brought a painters’s devotion to color form and beauty to natural history and you can see a spiritual impulse here too the desire to celebrate God’s artistry in his tiniest creations and the creatures that so many deem ugly or scary or revolting.