Maria Sibylla Merian

Greater Burdock with insects by Merian - Handcoloured engraving - 18th century

1730

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647—1717) was a naturalist and artist. Her contributions to entomology were never appropriately recognized in her lifetime. She is now considered to be a pioneer in the fields of botany and zoology. She made detailed observations of live specimens, which was a departure from previous studies that used preserved specimens. She focused great detail on the processes of metamorphosis, which had not been studied so comprehensively before her work. The engravings for the publication were done by J. Mulder, P. Sluyter and A. Stopendaal, all after paintings on vellum by Merian. The work is considered to be one of the most beautiful, and famous illustrated natural history works of the 18th century. The work was the result of Merian's trip in 1699 with her daughter Dorothea to Surinam, a Dutch colony on the northeastern coast of South America. The pair studied and recorded plants and insects for two years under difficult conditions. They came back to Amsterdam with specimens, notes and drawings and there completed their astounding work. One naturalist proclaimed "Her portrayals of living insects and other animals were imbued with a charm, a minuteness of observation and an artistic sensibility that had not previously been seen in a natural history book; if Gould and Audubon have 'a spiritual ancestor, then it is difficult to think of a more worthy claimant to the title than Maria Sibylla Merian." On the day Maria Sibylla Merian died, Tsar Peter the Great purchased a two-volume collection of her unbound paintings, as well as her journal. Born in Frankfurt am Main, Maria Sibylla Merian was the daughter of Matthaus Merian the Elder (1593—1650), a famous German-Swiss painter, engraver and publisher. Her father died when she was three and her mother remarried Jacob Marrel (1614-1681), who was a still-life painter. From the time she was eleven, Marrel schooled Maria Sibylla Merian in the tradition of northern European still life painting, working directly from life. As her interests evolved toward the study of insects, she employed these artistic skills to create her outstanding scientific and esthetically beautiful works. She was truly at the crossroads of art and science.