Among drawings by less well known artists is an oil on paper by Louis Jean-Jacques Durameau which captures the hard and heavy Labour of workers in a paper mill.
Aside from the overall Numbers, we know that the vast majority of Libyan fighters profiled in the documents hailed from northeastern Libya, where today's rebellion is centered.
It may not have been ladylike to depict a giant spider devouring a hummingbird, but when Merian did it at the turn of the 18th century, surprisingly, nobody objected.
In our own time, the opposition between 'descriptivists' and 'prescriptivists' has often become extreme, with both sides painting unreal pictures of the other.