Insects and Fish with Island Background
Hand-coloured etching from a 1719 edition of Maria Sibylla Merian's seminal Metamorphasibus Insectorum Surinamensium, the product of two years of research — from 1699 to 1701 — in the then-Dutch colony of Surinam. It was first published in 1705 in Amsterdam, with a number of subsequent editions issued over the next decades. (Source: The Minneapolis Institute of Art)