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| Maria Sibylla Merian |
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| Maria Sibylla Merian |
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| Maria Sibylla Merian |
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| Maria Sibylla Merian |
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| Maria Sibylla Merian |
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| Maria Sibylla Merian |
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| Maria Sibylla Merian |
The daughter of the important Swiss engraver Matthaeus Merian, Maria Sibylla Merian grew up in the famous publishing house of Theodor de Bry, one of whose daughters had been Merian's first wife. Sibylla was thus involved in and influenced by the classic lifestyle devoted to the arts and, having extanded artistic talents of her own and an insatiable curiosity about the life of insects became the most important entomologist and a very distinguished painter of insects of her time, although the flowers are the main point of decorative attraction for us. She portrays the insects upon the plants where they lived. The beauty and delicacy of these botanical plates represent some of the finest artistic copper etchings.
One must admire Maria Sibylla Merian as a woman of her time. She and her younger daughter left Europe to travel to the Dutch colony of Surinam (Guiana), at that time in history an extremely difficult enterprise. They arrived in Surinam in 1701. There she collected material for her greatest book "Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium" which was published in 1705 in Amsterdam. She made several hundred drawings on vellum which she and her daughter later engraved. It is a work rich with tropical flowers and fruit, insects of all kinds, especially exotic butterflies, moths and caterpillars.
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