In the gap between science and art: a series of illustrations of triatomine bugs from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute

Abstract

The article analyzes a series of scientific drawings created and printed as part of a scientific work that has never been published out by the Oswaldo Cruz Institute. Deemed "incorrect" by scientists, these drawings lay abandoned for over seventy years. We have investigated their history in an effort to discover what might have led science to condemn the series. We also undertook a brief historical analysis of verisimilitude in scientific drawing. This case affords an interesting opportunity to explore some aspects of representation in artistic production, like issues involving vision, perception, the interpretation of images and visual communication through them, the functionality and objectivity of scientific illustration, as well as certain distinctions between the characteristics of illustration in zoology and in cartography and botany, and its ambiguous relationship with art.