Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian
File:Merian 500DM.jpg
Born	(1647-04-02)2 April 1647 Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire
Died	13 January 1717(1717-01-13) (aged 69) Amsterdam, Netherlands
Occupation(s)	Naturalist, scientific illustrator, entomologist
Known for	Documentation of butterfly metamorphosis, scientific illustration

Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717) was a Swiss naturalist and scientific illustrator who studied plants and insects and painted them in great detail. Her careful observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly makes her a significant, albeit not well-known, contributor to entomology.

Biography

Maria Sibylla Merian was born on 2 April 1647 in Frankfurt, then a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, into the family of the Swiss engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian the Elder. Her father died three years later, and in 1651 her mother married still life painter Jacob Marrel. Marrel encouraged Merian to draw and paint. At the age of thirteen she painted her first images of insects and plants from specimens she had captured.

"In my youth, I spent my time investigating insects. At the beginning, I started with silk worms in my home town of Frankfurt. I realised that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silk worms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed". (foreword from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium — Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam)

In 1665 Merian married Marrel's apprentice, Johann Andreas Graff from Nuremberg; his father was a poet and director of the local high school, one of the leading schools in 17th century Germany. Two years later she had her first child, Johanna Helena, and the family moved to Nuremberg. While living there, Maria Sibylla continued painting, working on parchment and linens, and creating designs for embroidery patterns. She gave drawing lessons to unmarried daughters of wealthy families (her "Jungferncompaney", i.e. virgin group), which helped her family financially, and increased its social standing. This provided her with access to the finest gardens, maintained by the wealthy and elite.

Travel to Surinam

In 1699 the city of Amsterdam sponsored Merian to travel to Suriname in South America, along with her younger daughter Dorothea Maria. Before departing, she wrote:

In Holland, with much astonishment what beautiful animals came from the East and West Indies. I was blessed with having been able to look at both the expensive collection of Doctor Nicolaas Witsen, mayor of Amsterdam and director of the East Indies society, and that of Mr. Jonas Witsen, secretary of Amsterdam. Moreover I also saw the collections of Mr. Fredericus Ruysch, doctor of medicine and professor of anatomy and botany, Mr. Livinus Vincent, and many other people. In these collections I had found innumerable other insects, but finally if here their origin and their reproduction is unknown, it begs the question as to how they transform, starting from caterpillars and chrysalises and so on. All this has, at the same time, led me to undertake a long dreamed of journey to Suriname. (foreword in Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium)

Merian worked in Suriname (which included what later became known as the French, Dutch and British Guianas) for two years, travelling around the colony and sketching local animals and plants. She also criticized the way Dutch planters treated Amerindian and black slaves. She recorded local native names for the plants and described local uses. In 1701 malaria forced her to return to Netherlands.

Back in the Netherlands she sold specimens she had collected and published a collection of engravings about the life in Suriname. In 1705 she published a book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium about the insects of Suriname.

In 1715 Merian suffered a stroke and was partially paralysed. She continued her work, but the disease probably affected her ability to work. A later registry lists her as a pauper.

Maria Sibylla Merian died in Amsterdam on 13 January 1717. Her daughter Dorothea published Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis, a collection of her mother's work, posthumously.

In the last years of the twentieth century, the work of Merian has been rediscovered and recognised. For example, her portrait was printed on the 500 DM note before Germany converted to the euro. Her portrait has also appeared on a 0.40 DM stamp, released on September 17, 1987, and many schools are named after her. In 2005, a modern research vessel named Maria S. Merian was launched at Warnemünde, Germany. She was honored with a Google Doodle on April 2nd 2013 to mark her 366th birth anniversary.

Her work

A plate taken from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium

Merian worked as a botanic artist. She published three collections of engravings of plants in 1675, 1677, and 1680. Afterward she studied insects, keeping her own live specimens, and made drawings showing insect metamorphosis, in which all life stages of the insect (egg, larva, pupa, and adult) were depicted in the same drawing.

In her time, it was very unusual that someone would be genuinely interested in insects, which had a bad reputation and were colloquially called "beasts of the devil." As a consequence of their reputation, the metamorphosis of these animals was largely unknown. Merian described the life cycles of 186 insect species, amassing evidence that contradicted the contemporary notion that insects were "born of mud" by spontaneous generation.

Moreover, although certain scholars were aware of the process of metamorphosis from the caterpillar to the butterfly, the majority of people did not understand the process.

The work that Anna Maria Sibylla Merian published, Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung -- The Caterpillars' Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food, was very popular in certain sections of high society as a result of being published in the vernacular. However, it is notable that her work was largely ignored by scientists of the time because the official language of science was still Latin.

Merian also described many other details of the evolution and lifecycle of the insects she observed. She could, for example, show that each stage of the change from caterpillar to butterfly depended on a small number of plants for its nourishment. She noted that as a consequence the eggs were laid near these plants.

Her work places her among one of the first naturalists to have observed insects directly. This approach gave her much more insight into their lives and was contrary to the way that most scientists worked at the time.

A page taken from Erucarum Ortus

The pursuit of her work in Suriname was an unusual endeavour, especially for a woman. In general, only men received royal or government funding to travel in the colonies to find new species of plants and animals, make collections and to work there, or to settle. Scientific expeditions at this period of time were not common, and Merian's unofficial, self-funded expedition raised many eyebrows. She succeeded, however, in discovering a whole range of previously unknown animals and plants in the interior of Surinam. Merian spent time studying and classifying her findings and described them in great detail. Her classification of butterflies and moths is still relevant today. She used Native American names to refer to the plants, which became used in Europe:

"I created the first classification for all the insects which had chrysalises, the daytime butterflies and the nighttime moths. The second classification is that of the maggots, worms, flies, and bees. I retained the indigenous names of the plants, because they were still in use in America by both the locals and the Indians". (in the foreword of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium).

Her drawings of plants, frogs, snakes, spiders, iguanas, and tropical beetles are still collected today by amateurs all over the world. The German word Vogelspinne—mygalomorphae, translated literally as bird spider—probably has its origins in an engraving by Maria Sibylla Merian. The engraving, created from sketches drawn in Surinam, shows a large spider who had just captured a bird. In the same engraving and accompanying text Merian was the first European to describe both army ants and leaf cutter ants as well as their effect on other organisms.

Shortly before Merian's death her work was seen in Amsterdam by Peter the Great. After her death he acquired a significant number of her paintings which to this day are kept in academic collections in St. Petersburg.

See also

• Women artists

Bibliography

• Neues Blumenbuch. Volume 1. 1675
• Neues Blumenbuch. Volume 2. 1677
• Neues Blumenbuch. Volume 3. 1677
• Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung. 1679
• Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. 1705

References

• de Bray, Lys (2001). The Art of Botanical Illustration: A history of classic illustrators and their achievements. Quantum Publishing Ltd., London. ISBN 1-86160-425-4.
• Patricia Kleps-Hok: Search for Sibylla: The 17th Century's Woman of Today, U.S.A 2007, ISBN 1-4257-4311-0; ISBN 1-4257-4312-9.
• Helmut Kaiser: Maria Sibylla Merian: Eine Biografie. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-538-07051-2
• Uta Keppler: Die Falterfrau: Maria Sibylla Merian. Biographischer Roman. dtv, München 1999, ISBN 3-423-20256-4 (Nachdruck der Ausgabe Salzer 1977)
• Charlotte Kerner: Seidenraupe, Dschungelblüte: Die Lebensgeschichte der Maria Sibylla Merian. 2. Auflage. Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 1998, ISBN 3-407-78778-2
• Dieter Kühn: Frau Merian! Eine Lebensgeschichte. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-10-041507-8
• Inez van Dullemen: Die Blumenkönigin: Ein Maria Sybilla Merian Roman. Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-7466-1913-0
• Kurt Wettengl: Von der Naturgeschichte zur Naturwissenschaft - Maria Sibylla Merian und die Frankfurter Naturalienkabinette des 18. Jahrhunderts. Kleine Senckenberg-Reihe 46: 79 S., Frankfurt am Main 2003
• Kim Todd: Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis. Harcourt, USA, 2007. ISBN 0-15-101108-7.
• Ella Reitsma: "Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters, Women of Art and Science" Waanders, 2008. ISBN 978-90-400-8459-1.

Further reading

• Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives.” Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995, pp. 140–202.
• Reidell, Heidi. “A Study of Metamorphosis.” “Américas” Magazine. March–April 2008, pp. 28–35.

External links

• Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium:
  • Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium images
  • Online version of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium from GDZ
  • Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705) - digital facsimile, Linda Hall Library
• Other
• vídeo de imágenes de su trabajo
• German Language Site on Maria with Music and a lot of images
• Online version of Over de voortteeling en wonderbaerlyke veranderingen der Surinaemsche Insecten from GDZ
• Online version of Erucarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis from GDZ
• Online version of De Europische Insecten
• The Flowering Genius of Maria Sibylla Merian Ingrid Rowland on Merian from The New York Review of Books
• Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung ...images
• Gaedike, R.; Groll, E. K. & Taeger, A. 2012: Bibliography of the entomological literature from the beginning until 1863 : online database - version 1.0 - Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut.

•  Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)