Giant Peacock Moth

'Yesterday I drew a very large, rather rare night moth. [...] To paint it I would have had to kill it, and that would have been a shame since the animal was so beautiful.'wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo in May 1889. Later Vincent decided to paint the moth after all, using his drawing as a model. Van Gogh called the moth a'death's-head-moth'and depicted a kind of skull on the back of its body. However, it was actually a giant peacock moth, a species that has only stripes there.