Still Life with Poppy, Insects, and Reptiles

Known to contemporaries as "The Snuffler" due to his penchant for rooting in the forest’s undergrowth, Marseus van Schrieck participated in the emerging seventeenth-century culture of empirical or observation-based research, which formed the cornerstone of modern science. This discipline depended on skills of close looking inherent to the painter’s practice. He collected natural specimens and used new technologies like the microscope to examine them. The artist’s signature forest-floor paintings interweave diverse elements studied piecemeal in the studio. This example bristles with interactions between a lizard, snake, snails, and butterflies, all in the shadow of a poppy, shown not in a vase but growing in the wild.