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Abstract
More than three hundred butterflies from Rio de Janeiro appear natural diepressed (nature printing) and drawn in watercolour in a small album sui generis in the Portuguese museological context – Lepidoptera fluminensis. No title, author or date is displayed, however the entomology work recognizes Queen Maria I of Portugal as recipient. Three references attribute the authorship of the manuscript to the naturalist Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, while another identifies him as patron and dates it from 1789. The hypotheses put forward, the uniqueness of the book and the scarce knowledge about it invite us to study it. With this article, we will investigate the authorship, production, entomological representation, reception and history of this volume; allowing us to conclude that this Natural History treasure is an icon of the Brazilian colonial scientific art of the late eighteenth century.
