This butterfly I photographed today at the Hershey Butterfly House likely belongs to the genus “Heliconius”, aka “the longwings.” But it looks very similar to the one illustrated in a 15th-century Medieval French Manuscript which scholars have identified as an “Aglais urticae” or “Small Tortoiseshell”. Both the 21st century butterfly house and the Medieval painting demonstrate that the beauty of butterflies has been acknowledged and celebrated across time.
The Medieval imagination was highly symbolic, and for many, butterflies had a Christian connotation — it signified the resurrection of the soul. Their beauty was born from a transformation from their entombment inside their chrysalis, like a spirit let free from a body interred in the ground.
But Medieval artists and thinkers didn’t get their ideas about butterflies only from Christianity, but also from Greek and Roman mythology. In Ancient Greek, the word for butterfly is “psyche,” which also means soul. The myth of Psyche and Cupid is a love story that symbolized the triumph of the spirit. In this tale, Psyche and Cupid fall in love and have to go through many trials before they can be united. In the end, Zeus/Jupiter makes Psyche immortal and allows the God of Love, Cupid, to be with her. So it was not unusual to see illustrations of a putti/Cupid with a butterfly, as in the second image.
The third slide shows a third-century mosaic of Psyche, with butterfly wings.
