Merian Maria Sibylla

Born on April 2,  1647 Maria Sibylla Merian, German painter, botanist and entomologist, died on January 13, 1717. She was born in Frankfurt and was taught painting and engraving by her stepfather, the painter and engraver Jacob Marrel [1613 - 11 Nov 1681 bur.], whose speciality was traditional Dutch flower pictures.

Her life was marked by her great talent as a painter of flowers and her interest in insects. Fifty of Merian's drawings of flowers and insects are kept at Rosenborg; presumably they came from her first book on garden flowers. Her second book concentrates on the stages of development of butterflies and the plants they live off. It was an important scientific work, being the first time a writer compared insects with their host plants.

In 1699 Merian travelled to Guyana, in South America, where she listed and painted the local insects and flowers. The works of Maria Sibylla Merian are characterized by great technical skill and sharp observational abilities. Flowers and insects are precisely represented and her pictures are beautifully composed.

She published Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensis in 1705; in it plants, as well as insects, are described and illustrated. — Besides creating visual images of great beauty, Maria Sibylla Merian made observations that revolutionized both botany and zoology. This extraordinary artist-scientist was born in Frankfurt. Her father, Matthäus Merian the Elder, was a Swiss printmaker and publisher who died when she was three. One year later her mother married Jacob Marell, a Flemish flower painter and one of Merian's first teachers. From early childhood, Merian was interested in drawing the animals and plants she saw around her. In 1670, five years after her marriage to the painter Johann Andreas Graff, the family moved to Nuremberg, where Merian published her first illustrated books. In preparation for a catalogue of European moths, butterflies, and other insects, Merian collected, raised, and observed the living insects, rather than working from preserved specimens, as was the norm. In 1685 Merian left Nuremberg and her husband, from whom she was later divorced, to live with her two daughters and her widowed mother in the Dutch province of West Friesland. After her mother's death, Merian returned to Amsterdam. Eight years later, at the age of 52, Merian took the astonishing step of embarking-with her younger daughter, but no male companion, on a dangerous, three-month trip to the Dutch colony of Surinam, in South America. Having seen some of the dried specimens of animals and plants that were popular with European collectors, Merian wanted to study them within their natural habitat. She spent the next two years studying and drawing the indigenous flora and fauna. Forced home by malaria, Merian published her most significant book in 1705. The lavishly illustrated Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensis established her international reputation.