Visual representations of butterfly drawings

In ancient Egyptian mythology, the butterfly was first associated with the transcendence of the soul. This belief was further shaped by the ancient Greeks, who cemented the association quite literally.

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Memento Mori

Maria van Oosterwijck, Flower Still Life (1669). Courtesy of Cincinnati Art Museum.

Butterflies, with their colorful and intricate wings and oh-so-brief lifespans, lasting but a few weeks between spring and early summer, have understandably come to symbolize life’s ephemerality.

Dutch Golden Age painter Maria van Oosterwyck was famed for vanitas paintings, which remind viewers of the impermanence of worldly luxuries and the eternal nature of the soul.

Adriaen Coorte, Three Medlars with a Butterfly (circa 1705)

Oosterwyck was also famed for her frequent inclusion of Red Admiral butterflies into her most significant paintings. Scholars believe these butterflies were her own unique symbol of Christ’s resurrection and the promise of eternal life. The metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a cocoon, emerging as a butterfly, symbolically mirrored the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Here, the red and white of the butterflies’ wings symbolized Christ’s bodily sacrifice, and white, the Holy Spirit. Oosterwyck wasn’t the only artist to favor butterflies during the Dutch Golden Age: contemporaneous still life painters, including Adriaen Coorte and Rachel Ruysch, were also known for their bountiful depictions of butterflies.

Worldwide Botanical Wonders

Maria Sibylla Merian, Pineapple (Ananas comosus) with the life cycle of a Dido Longwing Butterfly (Philaethria dido). Collection of the Royal Trust.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, amid the heights of European colonialism, artists and naturalists around the world set out to detail the flora and fauna of hitherto free lands. Many of these images, though ostensibly scientific, are informed by the artistic tastes and cultural beliefs of the artists’ homelands—which is certainly the case when it comes to their depictions of butterflies.

Much in the same way that still life artists of the age incorporated butterflies hovering around bouquets of flowers, naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, too, included the insects in her illustrations of the flora she discovered while traveling in Suriname in 1699. Her illustrations were popularized in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, a coveted volume which brought the splendors of Suriname’s natural landscape to Europe—including many new varieties of moths and butterflies.

Symbols of Womanhood and Marriage

Katsushika Hokusai, Peonies and Butterfly (1833–34). Collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

In Japan, the butterfly has a rich symbolic history, appearing on family crests, in origami, on kimono designs, and in ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Edo era. A symbol of the transition from girlhood to womanhood, butterflies are also tied to many aspects of female ritual and experience.

Yanagawa Shigenobu I, Two Dancers in Butterfly Costumes (circa 1820s). Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The art of origami emerged in Japan in the 1600s; by 1680 the poet Ihara Saikaku famously wrote of a dream of paper butterflies. In Japanese wedding ceremonies, two types of origami butterflies, called Mecho (symbolizing the female) and Ocho (symbolizing the male) are symbolically placed on sake bottles.

While paintings of butterflies date back almost a thousand years in Japan, butterflies became an especially popular subject for the ukiyo-e woodblock prints in images that detailed the intimate lives of courtesans and performers. Depictions of butterflies were made by famous Edo artists including Utagawa (Ando) Hiroshige and Yanagawa Shiganobu, who often depicted dancers in butterfly costumes. Among the most famous of these depictions was Katsushika Hokusai’s Peonies and Butterfly, of which Claude Monet owned a print, which he kept with him at Giverny.