Pierre Lyonnet or Lyonet (21 July 1706 – 10 January 1789) was a Dutch

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

and engraver who became a naturalist. He was a collector both of shells (a major collecting craze at the time) and paintings, whose collection included '' Woman Reading a Letter'' by Vermeer, now in the

Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...

. This fetched far less than his best shells in the auctions of his collection after his death.

Biography

According to the RKD he was a pupil of

Hendrik van Limborch Hendrik van Limborch (9 March 1681 – 3 February 1759) was a painter and engraver from the Northern Netherlands. Limborch was born in The Hague as the son of a lawyer and became the pupil of Jan Hendrik Brandon, Robbert Duval, Jan de Baen and ...

Carel de Moor Carel de Moor (25 February 1655 – 16 February 1738) was a Dutch Golden Age etcher and painter. He was a pupil of Gerard Dou. Biography Carel de Moor was born in Leiden. According to Houbraken, his father was an art dealer who wanted him to s ...

, and

Jan Wandelaar Jan Wandelaar (14 April 1690, Amsterdam – 26 March 1759, Leiden), was an 18th-century painter, illustrator and engraver from the Northern Netherlands. Biography Wandelaar trained under Jacob Folkema, Gillem van der Gouwen, and Gérard de ...

.Pieter Lyonet
in the RKD He was secretary and translator (he spoke more than eight languages) for the government of the Dutch Republic. Initially he trained as a

lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...

before choosing to specialize in the engraving of natural history and the work of

dissection Dissection (from Latin ' "to cut to pieces"; also called anatomization) is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause o ...

. He illustrated ''Theology of the insects, or demonstration of the perfections of God in all that relates to the insects'' (1742) of Friedrich Christian Lesser (1692–1754) and ''Treatise on the polyps'' (1744) of Abraham Trembley (1710–1784). He then decided to make his do own observations and to write his own

monograph A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograph ...

on the anatomy of the insects. His first work appeared in 1760 under the name of ''Anatomical treatise of the caterpillar which corrodes the wood of Willow''. He illustrated 4,041 different muscles thus. He lacked the anatomical knowledge of

Jan Swammerdam Jan Swammerdam (February 12, 1637 – February 17, 1680) was a Dutch biologist and microscopist. His work on insects demonstrated that the various phases during the life of an insect—egg, larva, pupa, and adult—are different forms of the ...

(1637–1680) and of Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) and his observations show it. His book was received with scepticism which affirmed that Lyonnet imagined the details which he drew with so much precision. It was to counter these criticisms, that he put in the second edition which appears in 1762, a drawing of its instruments and a description of its method. Lyonnet planned to study the

chrysalis A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their ...

and the

adult An adult is a human or other animal that has reached full growth. In human context, the term ''adult'' has meanings associated with social and legal concepts. In contrast to a " minor", a legal adult is a person who has attained the age of major ...

but, sixty years old, the tiredness of his eyes obliged him to stop his projects. Lyonnet was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 14 January 1748.

References

* ; Illustrations from ''Traité anatomique'' (1750): larva of the willow moth willow moth Willows, also called sallows and osiers, from the genus ''Salix'', comprise around 400 speciesMabberley, D.J. 1997. The Plant Book, Cambridge University Press #2: Cambridge. of typically deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist s ...

Biography

References

Literature