Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717) was a German-Dutch entomologist, naturalist, and scientific illustrator. She was one of the earliest European naturalists to document observations about insects directly; her work established that insects have a life cycle and do not appear by spontaneous generation. 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. She discovered many new facts about insect life through her studies. 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.

Life and career

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. Early on, she had access to many books about natural history. Regarding her youth, in the foreword to Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Merian wrote:

I spent my time investigating insects. At the beginning, I started with silkworms in my home town of Frankfurt. I realised that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silkworms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed. 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. 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. In 1678, she gave birth to her second daughter Dorothea Maria. 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. In 1679, she published her first work on insects, the first of a two-volume illustrated book focusing on insect metamorphosis. In 1678, the family had moved to Frankfurt am Main, but her marriage was an unhappy one. She moved in with her mother after her stepfather died in 1681. In 1683, she travelled to Gottorp and was attracted to the Labadists' community in Holstein. In 1685, Merian travelled with her mother, husband, and children to Friesland in the Netherlands, where her half-brother Caspar Merian had lived since 1677.

Friesland

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, during which Merian found time to study natural history and Latin — then the language of scientific publication. In the moors of Friesland, she observed the birth and development of frogs, collecting specimens for dissection. Merian stayed with the community until 1691. In Wieuwerd, the Labadists engaged in printing and many other occupations, including farming and milling. 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.

Amsterdam

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