Zephyr’s wings: Tiepolo’s imagination or the antlion Pseudimares Kimmins, 1933 (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae) as his model?

When Giambattista Tiepolo, in his painting ‘Triumph of Zephyr and Flora’, gave Zephyr dragonfly- like wings with eyespots, was he inspired by pure imagination or did he have an insect he had previously seen in mind: the rare and astonishing Pseudimares? It is impossible to be sure. The authors of the present note point out the innovatory characteristic of the pictorial arrangement adopted by Tiepolo for the wings, compared with stylistic elements which were fashionable before and during his epoch, and suggest the reasons why we cannot rule out that the artist could have been inspired by a model, a specimen of Pseudimares, two centuries before the scientific discovery of this very rare antlion, at present only known from Iran and Morocco. A short account is provided on the bio-ecological significance of the eyespots found on insect wings.