butterflies

This over 225 year old original antique handcolored copperplate engraving is taken from a fragment of
Carl Gustav Jablonsky’s famous work „Natursystem aller bekannten in- und ausländischen Insecten. Der
Schmetterlinge erster Theil” (Natural History Survey of Insects, Including Related Foreign Ones: Butterflies),
engraved by Ludwig Schmidt, and published by Ben Joachim Pauli in Berlin/Germany, 1783.

Carl Gustav Jablonsky (1756-1787) was a naturalist, entomologist and illusstrator who also was private secretary to the
Queen of Prussia. He edited the first two volumes of his major work on butterflies; the remaining nine volumes were edited by
Johann F.W. Herbst (1743-1807) a German naturalist and entomologist, after Jablonsky's untimely death at the age of 31.
Jablonsky also began the first complete survey of coleoptera, an order of insects including beetles, borers, weevils and fireflies,
a project also taken over by Herbst and published between 1785 and 1806. A great number of the plates were drawn by Jablonsky himself. The work should be considered a first attempt to a total survey of the coleoptera.