Insects in Italian Painting through Time: From Symbolism to Naturalism

Insects appear less frequently in Italian painting than in Northern European traditions, yet their presence reveals a wide range of meanings and functions that shift across time, genres, and cultural contexts. This contribution explores how insects have been represented in Italian painting from the Middle Age to the early modern period, highlighting a gradual movement from symbolic and allegorical roles to increasingly naturalistic and observation-based depictions, while highlighting that the boundary between art and science is never rigid. In religious and allegorical works, insects often convey symbolic meanings rooted in ancient mythology or Christian thought. The butterfly, traditionally linked to the soul, is central in Pisanello’s “Portrait of an Este Princess”, where its function may range from matrimonial symbolism to an allusion to mortality. A damselfly, associated with water and spiritual transformation, appears in Tommaso Aleni’s “Madonna of the Pomegranate”, whereas grasshoppers signify destructive force in Lorenzo Lotto’s “Saint Jerome”. Flies and bees provide contrasting associations: flies evoke decay and fragility of life, as in Jacopo Ligozzi’s “Memento Mori”, while honeybees signify industriousness and civic virtue in Pietro da Cortona’s “Triumph of Divine Providence”. With the rise of Renaissance naturalism, artists increasingly approached insects with scientific attention. Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of dragonflies and beetles (with an almost engineering approach) and Caravaggio’s faithful depiction of fruit pests in the “Basket of Fruit”, illustrate this convergence between artistic practice and empirical observation. Early modern naturalists—including Ulisse Aldrovandi and Francesco Stelluti—deepened this connection, while still-life painters such as Fede Galizia and Giovanna Garzoni produced highly detailed, taxonomically recognisable insect portrayals. Overall, insect imagery in Italian painting—though not abundant—offers valuable insights into evolving symbolic frameworks and into the progressive integration of naturalistic and scientific observation within visual culture.