Cobweb painting

The stickiness of spiders' webs that allows them to adhere to form a 'canvas' is due to droplets of glue suspended on the gossamer threads.

[3] The celebrated beauty Philippine Welser (1527–1580) married Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol secretly, and she settled near Innsbruck, living in the Schloss Ambras.

[3] In the 19th and early 20th century the cobweb artists of Innsbruck painted landscapes and scenes involving local peasants, as well as military engagements of the wars of independence.

[4] The cobwebs obtained for the early Austrian example came from Agelenidae funnel-web spiders, whose gossamer sheets were collected in the form of a thin canvas, then put under tension to make an oval blank.

[3] Chester Cathedral possesses a cobweb image of the Virgin Mary, painted on the net of the moth caterpillar Yponomeuta evonymella, probably made by Johan Burgman (d. 1825) from the Tyrol, Austria.