Amazingly Rare.

I got this book.

It's way out of my league, but it is in the league I would like to be in.

It is beautiful. It chronicles the time of discovery when explorers headed out and found new places and in those places, new life. I have always loved beautiful things and have come to know that there are two kinds of art in the world: The art that inspires me to go and try something like it and the art that I look at and think, 'I could never do anything like that.' This book is the latter. How does a person could look at flower and tell his hand to do this...

What's more, these were scientists who were drawing to document the freshly found.

Often by memory.

They were seeing things that had never been seen by either science or art.

These insects are known as Lantern Flies because they gave off a bright flash of light. Maria Sibylla Merian (who drew this) said they were as light as a candle and strong enough to read a paper by. Scientists named them 'Fulgora' meaning 'Flash of Lightning' stemming from similar accounts. But European scientists who named them only had dead or 'ailing' specimens and never really got much light out of them.


Even more interesting is that NO ONE since has ever seen a light coming from these insects. Maria described a burst of flame out of the box that she kept several in and now...nothing.


That is both Rare and Amazing.





There are so many incredible paintings in here and I hope to learn all about them.


Like what's going on here?


I get that snakes are fighting, as I'm sure snakes would, but why has that poor frog given it all up and splayed himself out to watch the battle? And why doesn't his buddy there help him out? What's more, why did the artist choose to depict him that way? There is so much action going on what was it that made the artist think, 'That's it. Just like that. That is what this species of frog would look like in the presence of dueling serpents.'






I got this book from Anthropologie where it is on sale for $19.95 (plus my discount), so while it was not hard won, it still feels like a Rare and Amazing find.

There are a lot of things I'm leaving out, like it is written by David Attenborough (of Planet Earth fame) and has illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci, both of which deserve note but in the end it really is just drawings of spectacular things that are already out there. And (without getting too zealous) what is the more awesome creation:


The Big Crocodile Wraastling the Coral Snake?

Or, the hand that depicts it?









~p