Creepy

 

 

This autumn the Rijksmuseum will be teeming with more than a thousand colourful butterflies, hairy spiders and shiny toads. People once associated these crawly creatures with death and the devil, but later on their beauty gripped the imagination of artists and scientists such as Albrecht Dürer, Wenzel Jamnitzer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Maria Sibylla Merian. Crawly Creatures, the exhibition, sheds light on the changing perceptions of these tiny beasties in the arts and sciences. Museums and private collectors all over the world have loaned the highlights of their collections for this exhibition, including the first drawing with an insect as the main subject by Albrecht Dürer in 1505 from the United States.