Herbs, Butterflies and a Serpent
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Seven white butterflies, a painted lady, and what appear to be cabbage whites and brimstones, hover against a near-black background. A broad-leafed plant grows at the center left, with a carved stone fragment or ruined capital visible behind it. A brown serpent coils at the base of the plant, its head raised, looking up toward the butterflies. A strip of green moss covers the ground. The painting is almost entirely dark — the butterflies and the snake are the only things catching light, glowing against the black like specimens pinned to velvet. Striep was a Dutch Golden Age painter born in Den Bosch in 1634. He was a follower of Otto Marseus van Schrieck, who invented the sottobosco genre: intimate, dark paintings of the forest floor showing plants, reptiles, insects, and fungi in close-up.