An Arrowhead Blue Butterfly and a Scotch Bonnet Sea Shell 17th century Circle of Balthasar van der Ast Dutch A remarkable number of drawings by the flower still-life painter Balthasar van der Ast has come down to us. These highly detailed pictures that show rare and exotic plants, shells and insects would have functioned as reference material for van der Asts paintings: indeed, various examples can be found directly copied in his intricate still-lives.Depicted here is an Arrowhead Blue Butterfly, native to North America, and a Scotch Bonnet Seashell, which can be found predominantly in the Western Atlantic Ocean. They most likely were brought to Europe by seamen from the Dutch West India Company, who did good business importing exotic species from foreign territories, for which there was a great interest among European audiences.Meticulous still-life drawings such as this would also have appealed to seventeenth-century amateurs of botany and people with an interest in zoology. The pos