This monumental portrait of a thistle illustrates the fascination with the natural world—and with its careful documentation—that characterizes so much of Dutch science and culture in the seventeenth century. It was then that Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek, the developer of the microscope, lived, and the line between artist and scientist was not as hard and fast as it would become later on. For example, Johannes Goedaert was a professional painter who illustrated his own important book on moths.

Marseus van Schrieck worked in Florence and Rome between 1648 and 1663, and he also visited England and France. He was fascinated by the world of grasshoppers and lizards, butterflies and weeds, and kept a small terrarium to observe these little dramas firsthand. This unusually elaborate—and ambitious—composition is the kind of work that impressed not only the Grand Duke of Tuscany, for whom he worked, but also the artist-scientist Maria Sybilla Merian, who created both text and images for her monumental publication on the insects of Surinam, as well as other artists of the time.