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3 unusual facts about Cobweb painting


Cobweb painting

Elias Prunner of Pustertal was the first secular artist to practice cobweb painting and in 1765 he painted the Empress Maria Theresa.

Web painting is first documented in the 16th century from the Valley of Pustertal in the Austrian Tyrolean Alps, carried out by monks who produced paintings on canvases made entirely of spiders' webs or caterpillars' silk.

Chester Cathedral possesses a cobweb image of the Virgin Mary, painted on the net of a caterpillar species Hyponomeuta Envoymella L. It is probably by Johan Burgman (d.1825) from the Tyrol and it is a copy of the original image as painted by Lucas Cranach I (1472-1553).



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