inter15.txt.htm -
10 >
(1617-1673), Daniel Seghers (1590-1661), and many others. The
insect depicted is either part of a still-life (flowers or
fruit) arrangement, or more strikingly a live detail in a
conventional religious picture (Durer, Francesco di Gentile,
etc.). That in some cases the butterfly symbolizes something
(e.g.. Psyche) lies utterly outside my area of interest.
In 1968 you told me you hoped to travel to various
European museums for research purposes. Have you been doing
that?
Yes, that's one reason we've been spending so much time in
Italy, and in the future will be traveling to Paris and the
Louvre, and to the Dutch museums. We've been to small towns in
Italy, and to Florence, Venice, Rome, Milano, Naples, and
Pompeii, where we found a very badly drawn butterfly, long and
thin, like a Mayfly. There are certain obstacles: still-lifes
are not very popular today, they are gap-fillers, generally
hanging in dark places or high up. A ladder may be necessary, a
flashlight, a magnifying glass! My object is to identify such a
picture if there are butterflies in it (often it's only
"Anonymous" or "School of -- "), and get an efficient person to
take a photograph. Since I don't find many of those pictures in
the regular display rooms I try to find the curator because
some pictures may turn up in their stacks. It takes so much
time: I tramped through the Vatican Museum in Rome and found
only one butterfly, a Zebra Swallowtail, in a quite
conventional Madonna and Child by Gentile, as realistic
as though it were painted yesterday. Such paintings may throw
light on the time taken for evolution; one thousand years could
show some little change in trend. It's an almost endless