Merian, Maria Sibylla, 1647-1717

Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717[1]) was a German entomologist, naturalist and scientific illustrator. She was one of the earliest European naturalists to document observations about insects directly. Merian was a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family.

Merian received her artistic training from her stepfather, Jacob Marrel, a student of the still life painter Georg Flegel. Merian published her first book of natural illustrations in 1675. She had started to collect insects as an adolescent. At age 13, she raised silkworms. In 1679, Merian published the first volume of a two-volume series on caterpillars; the second volume followed in 1683. Each volume contained 50 plates that she engraved and etched. Merian documented evidence on the process of metamorphosis and the plant hosts of 186 European insect species. Along with the illustrations Merian included descriptions of their life cycles.

In 1699, Merian travelled to Dutch Guiana to study and record the tropical insects native to the region. In 1705, she published Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. Merian's Metamorphosis has been credited with influencing a range of naturalist illustrators. Because of her careful observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly, Merian is considered by David Attenborough to be among the more significant contributors to the field of entomology.[2] She discovered many new facts about insect life through her studies.[3] Until her careful, detailed work, it had been thought that insects were "born of mud" by spontaneous generation. Her pioneering research in illustrating and describing the various stages of development, from egg to larva to pupa and finally to adult, dispelled the notion of spontaneous generation and established the idea that insects undergo distinct and predictable life cycles.[4]
Maria Sibylla Merian's father, the Swiss engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian the Elder, married her mother, his second wife, Johanna Sybilla Heyne, in 1646. Maria was born within the next year, making her his ninth child. Her father died in 1650, and in 1651, her mother remarried Jacob Marrel, the flower and still life painter. Marrel encouraged Merian to draw and paint. While he lived mostly in Holland, his pupil Abraham Mignon trained her. At the age of 13, she painted her first images of insects and plants from specimens she had captured.[5] Early on, she had access to many books about natural history.[6] In May 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 seventeenth-century Germany. In January 1668, she had her first child, Johanna Helena, and the family moved to Nuremberg in 1670, her husband's home town. While living there, Merian continued painting, working on parchment and linen, and creating designs for embroidery. She also 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, where she could continue collecting and documenting insects.[6] In 1675, Merian was included in Joachim von Sandrart's German Academy. Aside from painting flowers she made copperplate engravings. After attending Sandrart's school she published flower pattern books.[8] In 1678, she gave birth to her second daughter Dorothea Maria.[9]

Other women still-life painters, such as Merian's contemporary Margaretha de Heer, included insects in their floral pictures, but did not breed or study them.[10]: 155  In 1679, she published her first work on insects, the first of a two-volume illustrated book focusing on insect metamorphosis.[5]

In 1678, the family had moved to Frankfurt am Main, but her marriage was an unhappy one.[5] She moved in with her mother after her stepfather died in 1681. In 1683, she traveled to Gottorp and was attracted to the Labadists' community in Holstein. In 1685, Merian travelled with her mother, husband, and children to Friesland where her half-brother Caspar Merian had lived since 1677. From 1685 onward, Merian, her daughters, and her mother lived with the Labadist community, which had settled on the grounds of a stately home – Walt(h)a Castle – at Wieuwerd in Friesland. They stayed there for three years and Merian found the time to study natural history and Latin, the language in which scientific books were written at the time.[8] In the moors of Friesland, she observed the birth and development of frogs, and collected them to dissect them.[10]: 163  Merian stayed with the community until 1691.[8]

In Wieuwerd, the Labadists engaged in printing and many other occupations, including farming and milling.[11] At its peak, the religious community numbered around 600, with many more adherents further afield. Visitors came from England, Italy, Poland, and elsewhere, but not all approved of the strict discipline, religious separatism, and community property. Merian's husband was refused by the Labadists, but came back twice.[12] In 1690, Merian's mother had died. A year later, she moved with her daughters to Amsterdam. In 1692, her husband divorced her. In Amsterdam the same year, her daughter Johanna married Jakob Hendrik Herolt, a successful merchant in the Suriname trade, originally from Bacharach. The flower painter Rachel Ruysch became Merian's pupil.[4] Merian made a living selling her paintings.[8] She and her daughter Johanna sold flower pictures to art collector Agnes Block. By 1698 Merian lived in a well-furnished house on Kerkstraat.[10]: 166  Merian arrived on 18 September or 19 September in Suriname, and met with the governor Paulus van der Veen. She worked for two years,[15] travelling throughout the colony and sketching local animals and plants. She recorded local native names for the plants and described local uses.[5]

Unlike other Dutch naturalists, Merian was not employed by a commercial enterprise or corporation. The preface of her Suriname book does not acknowledge any patrons or sponsors of her trip.[16] Some believe her journey may have been financed by the directors of the Dutch West India Company.[17]: 211  In her subsequent publication on the expedition Merian criticised the actions of the colonial merchants, saying that "the people there have no desire to investigate anything like that; indeed they mocked me for seeking anything other than sugar in the country." Merian also condemned the merchants' treatment of slaves. An enslaved person was forced to assist Merian in her research, and the labor of this person enabled interactions she had with the Amerindian and African slaves in the colony who assisted her in researching the plants and animals of Suriname. Merian also took an interest in agriculture and lamented the colonial merchants' resistance to plant or export anything other than sugar. She later showcased the vegetables and fruits that could be found in Suriname, including the pineapple.[17]: 212–213 

In June 1701 an illness, possibly malaria, forced her to return to the Dutch Republic.[5] Back in the Netherlands Merian opened a shop. She sold specimens she had collected and her engravings of plant and animal life in Suriname. In 1705, she published a book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium about the insects of Suriname.[3]

In 1715, Merian suffered a stroke. Despite being partially paralysed, she continued her work.[4] She died in Amsterdam on 13 January 1717 and was buried four days later at Leidse kerkhof.[18] Although she is sometimes described as dying impoverished,[19] her funeral was a middle-class one with fourteen pall-bearers.[20] Her daughter Dorothea published Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis, a collection of her mother's work, after Merian's death. Merian first made a name for herself as a botanical artist. In 1675, she started to publish a three-volume series, each with twelve plates depicting flowers.[21]: 35  In 1680 she published Neues Blumenbuch, combining the series.[22]: 142  Today, while Merian has experienced reinvigorated fame in the eyes of the art and science communities, some of her work has now been re-attributed to her daughters Johanna and Dorothea; Sam Segal has re-attributed 30 of 91 folios in the British Museum.[54]

Besides creating visual images of great beauty, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) made
observations that revolutionized both botany and zoology. This extraordinary artistscientist 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 received a grant from the City Fathers of
Amsterdam. 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
Page v
fauna. Forced home by malaria, Merian published her most significant book in 1705.
The lavishly illustrated Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam established her
international reputation. A second, posthumous, edition was published under the title
Dissertation in Insect Generations and Metamorphosis in Surinam.
She was the first published woman naturalist and became so respected and well known
that many eminent collectors, including Peter the Great, bought her work. Merian died
on January 13, 1717 possibly from a stroke.