This is a collection of the incredibly beautiful antique insect art by Joris Hoefnagel.

Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1601) was a famous 16^th century Flemish artist and merchant. He was particularly well known for his illustrations of natural history subjects, topographical views, illustrations and mythological works.

As an artist he was self-taught. Hoefnagel painted with watercolors, gouache and gold to produce some of the most amazing miniature paintings of animals. 

Insect Art Prints from the Four Elements

His most famous work is commonly known as the Four Elements and comprises four volumes of miniature paintings of the natural world reflecting the four elements of fire, earth, air and sea. 

The drawings of the animals were divided according to the elements.

The insect art prints curated here are from the first volume Animalia rationalia et insecta (ignis); Insects and fire. 

The other volumes were:

• Animalia quadrupedia et reptilia (terra) ; Footed animals and reptiles, (earth).
• Animalia aquatilia et conchiliata (aqua); Aquatic animals and creatures of the sea (water).
• Animalia volatilia et amphibia (aier); Birds and amphibians, animals of the air.  

Hoefnagel did not paint all the works in the book but rather copied from other artists’ works. These included a series of drawings by the Antwerp animal painter Hans Verhagen den Stommen and woodcuts from Konrad Gessner’s Historia Animalium.

Hoefnagels’ wonderful book of the natural world was a very important piece of 16th-century science. It provided a compendium of the entire known animal world at that time.

These insect illustrations also had an influence on the famous Flemish and Dutch still life art. Especially, the still life flower paintings that often featured insects too.

The downloaded insect paintings will be of a higher resolution than the images below.

To download the antique Insect Art prints just click on the highlighted title link and a larger image of the insect drawings will open in a new window in your browser. You can then print this image or save it to your hard drive.

1. Insect Art Plate 5 Stag Beetle

The name stag beetle is due to the large and distinctive mandibles found on the males of most species, which resemble the antlers of stags.

2. Insect Art Plate 9 Yellow Butterflies

Hoefnagel’s insect illustration of four yellow butterflies.

Butterflies are insects, as they have their skeletons on the outside of their bodies, called the exoskeleton. This protects the insect and keeps water inside their bodies so they don’t dry out.

Like all insects, butterflies have three body parts: the head, the thorax with wings and six legs, and the abdomen. 

There are about 18,500 named species of butterflies. They can be found on all continents of the world except Antarctica as it is too cold for them to survive there.

There is a collection of vintage butterfly images on Picture Box Blue.

3. Plate 13 Blue Butterflies

4. Plate 17 Various Insects Including Blue Dragonfly

Dragonflies are a common emblem on cultural artifacts such as pottery, rock paintings, statues, and Art Nouveau jewelry. They are used in traditional medicine in Japan and China and caught for food in Indonesia.

Dragonflies are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness in Japan, but seen as sinister in European folklore.  There are many more dragonfly drawings to be found in this collection here.

5. Plate 19 Assorted Flying Insects

6. Plate 22 Pink Flowers and Moths

7. Plate 25 Two Large Moths

8. Plate 27 Large Moth And Other Insect Art

Moths, like butterflies, belong to the scientific order Lepidoptera. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, most of which are nocturnal.

9. Plate 33 Lilac Flower and Insects

The lilac flower looks a bit like a bluebell, which grows wild on the forest floor and is popular with insects.

10. Plate 34 Assorted Insects Including Woodlouse

I know these insect drawings were from the work by Joris Hoefnagel titled Animalia rationalia et insecta (ignis); Insects and fire.  However, not all the creatures he illustrated were true insects.

For example, woodlice may look like insects, but in fact, they’re crustaceans and are related to crabs and lobsters.

11. Plate 35 Giant Spider

The writing on this insect illustration appears to be some religious Latin quote and not anything to do with the identification of the spiders in the picture as I first thought.

(However, my Latin is practically non-existent so I can’t be sure).

12. Plate 39 Insect Art Spiders

Spiders have been included this is a book of insect art and prints. However, both spiders and insects are invertebrates, but spiders are not insects.

All Insects have three body parts: the head, the thorax with wings and six legs, and the abdomen. Spiders are Arachnids and have two body parts: the cephalothorax (head + thorax) with eight legs, and the abdomen.

13. Plate 42 Green Beetle

Beetles are distinguished from other insects in that their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra.

Beetles are from the largest family of insects, Coleoptera, with about 400,000 species. This about 40% of all known insects and 25% of all known animal life-forms. And even more new species are discovered frequently.

14. Plate 43 Insect Art Many Beetles

15. Plate 44 Unusual Insects Including Mantis

Mantis all have forelegs that are greatly enlarged and adapted for catching and gripping prey; their upright posture, while remaining stationary with forearms folded, has led to the common name praying mantis.

16. Plate 45 Locusts

These insects look like locusts to me which are a type of grasshopper.

17. Plate 46 Insect Illustration Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers have had a long relationship with humans. Swarms of locusts can have devastating effects and cause famine, and even in smaller numbers, the insects can be serious pests.

They are used as food in countries such as Mexico and Indonesia and are commercially farmed for food and protein supplements.

Grasshoppers feature in art, symbolism and literature. They were a feature in some of the Dutch Masters still lifes inspired by these insect paintings of Joris Hoefnagel.

18. Plate 47 Various Insects Including Flies

19. Plate 50 Grasshoppers and Flower

20. Plate 51 Butterfly and Caterpillar on Flower

21. Insect Drawing Plate 53 Large Dragonfly

The detail on this large dragonfly illustrations is just amazing.

22. Hoefnagel Plate 57 Mosquito

Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals in the world. They are believed to kill over a million people every year through their transmission of deadly diseases.

23. Plate 63 Wasps and Flower

24. Plate 69 Bees and Wasps

Wasps and bees are both members of the Hymenoptera order of insects. However, their bodies are different, bees are hairy, while the wasps usually have smooth and shiny skin.

Wasps are narrow-waisted, have four wings and may be brightly colored, with black and yellow patterns. Unlike bees, which can sting only once wasps can sting multiple times. 

25. Plate 78 Ladybird and Other Insects

Ladybirds (ladybugs) after butterflies must be one of the most popular insects.

Not just because they are pretty but the bugs are considered a gardeners friend. That is because the majority of ladybirds species prey on herbivorous agricultural pests such as aphids.

26. Insect Art Plate 79 Assorted Small Insects

I hope you enjoyed this carefully curated collection of amazingly detailed antique insect illustrations as much as I did. You can find more vintage insect prints on Pillarboxblue.

Other natural history collections you might also enjoy are the fabulous natural history posters of Adolphe Millot. Also the collection of vintage animal prints, and all the various collections of vintage bird prints.

I used some of these vintage insect images with this nature Inspired decoupaged paper mache bowl.