Paintings from as early as the 17th century are providing ecological clues to researchers, revealing observations made by artists centuries before formal scientific documentation. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s 1611 painting, “Air,” depicted a bat consuming a songbird, a behavior not officially observed until the early 2000s.
Ecologist Pedro Romero-Vidal, of Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, discovered the bat depiction “completely unexpected.” The painting shows a greater noctule bat (Nyctalus lasiopterus) carrying a bird, a behavior Romero-Vidal believes the artist may have witnessed during visits to the bat’s Italian habitat. Scientists confirmed this behavior through fecal analysis in the early 2000s and direct observation in 2025.
Romero-Vidal and his colleagues are currently analyzing over 1,500 historical paintings for depictions of animals transported from distant lands, like monkeys and parrots, to gain ecological insights into their historical distribution. The repeated appearance of these animals suggests artists had knowledge of them, either through menageries or secondhand accounts.
Other artists, such as Maria Sibylla Merian, actively documented ecological relationships in detailed still lifes during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Art historian Anna Knaap, of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, notes that Merian was “matching the insects with the host plant,” a practice previously unrecorded. Merian’s work influenced Carl Linnaeus, considered the father of modern taxonomy, and Knaap describes her as “a scientist ahead of her time.”
In 2025, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston hosted an exhibition of works by Rachel Ruysch, another 17th and 18th-century artist. In preparation, Knaap and fellow historian Christopher Atkins collaborated with researchers to explore the potential scientific value of the paintings.
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