This beautiful thing here is the Disco Medusa jellyfish, illustrated by German biologist Ernst Haeckel. His gorgeously illustrated work “Kunstformen der Natur” (Art Forms in Nature) was published in ten volumes between 1899 and 1904, and it features the variety of the natural world, drawn in a style bridging the scientific and the artistic, featuring exotic shells and tropical fish, a nest of carnivorous nepenthes pitcher plants, assorted lichen, spiders, orchids, and microscopic creatures found in a drop of sea water.
Inspired by nature, Haeckel’s home “Villa Medusa” featured a muse in the form of a ceiling mural of the Disco Medusa. His home is now the main building of the Institute for the History of Medicine, Natural Science and Technology at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany.
Find out More:
Works by or about Ernst Haeckel at Internet Archive
Visitor info: The Ernst Haeckel House at Friedrich-Schiller University
