Review

She illustrated and proved the development of insect metamorphosis. Her passion for nature and particularly for insects led her to combine science and art. She taught her trade to her daughters and created a workshop in which she taught a group of young women. They collaborated to introduce some innovations in fabric. She portrayed with her brushes each stage of the life cycle of butterfly metamorphosis. She also went on a scientific expedition to Surinam.
Her biggest contribution to entomology were the new discoveries of nine new species of butterflies, two beetles and six plants.

Activities

English

• The flight of the butterflies
  • Spain > Biology and geology > 1st ESO > Living beings
  • Spain > Biology and geology > 3rd ESO > Living beings

Spanish

• El vuelo de las mariposas
  • Spain > Biology and geology > 1st ESO > Living beings
  • Spain > Biology and geology > 3rd ESO > Living beings

Justifications

• Although ignored for a long time, she is currently considered one of the most important initiators of modern entomology, thanks to her detailed observations and descriptions, with her own illustrations, and that of the metamorphosis of butterflies.
• Her illustrations, highly valued in the art market, have a high artistic quality and are one of the best examples of the relationship between art and science.
• She was a master artisan and had a workshop where she gathered a group of young women who she taught to observe and draw nature motifs
• She devised many innovations at her workshop that resulted in new treatments for making canvas more hardwearing and her drawings more resistant to washing.
• Nowadays, the species Catasticta sibyllae, lepidoptera of Panama recently described, takes her name in honour of Maria Sibylla Merian's contributions to Neotropical entomology.
• She travelled to Surinam to study insects and financed her own research.

Biography

Maria Sibylla Merian was born in Frankfurt the 2nd of April, 1647, and she died in Amsterdam the 17th of January 1717.
The daughter of a well-known artist and engraver, Maria Merian learned in her father's studio drawing techniques that enabled her to paint all kinds of flowers, fruits, birds and in particular insects: caterpillars, flies, mosquitoes, and spiders. This apprenticeship led to the young Merian's entry into science, as her drawings reflected a great ability to detect and capture the fine details of what she observed.

Before her twentieth birthday, in 1665, she married a painter and they moved to Nuremberg, where she set up her own studio in which she painted on canvas motifs copied from nature, which she then sold. As a master craftswoman, she gathered a group of young women whom she taught to observe and draw, while they were her assistants. Together, they came up with several innovations that made their fabrics more durable and their patterns more resistant to washing.

Merian had two daughters,  Johanna Helena Herolt and Dorothea Maria Graff, whom she carefully trained in the art of observing and drawing nature. Over time, they became her closest collaborators. In 1685, she divorced her husband and moved to live on her own in Amsterdam. She set up a new studio, which enabled her to support herself and her daughters through her work as a master craftswoman and her ability to produce excellent engravings and scientific illustrations. She, thus, revealed herself as a determined and independent woman capable of defending her own interests.

The career of Maria S. Merian as a respected naturalist began with the publication of a book in 1679, entitled The wondrous transformation of caterpillars and their remarkable diet of flowers, as a result of long years of observation and research. This book includes beautiful and accurate images of the life cycle of insects, showing their evolution from larva to butterfly, passing through the pupa or chrysalis stage. Simultaneously, the careful entomologist provided detailed drawings of the type of plants that served as food at each of these stages. Even though diurnal and nocturnal butterflies were Maria Merian's main interest, she carried out important works related to Botany. Thus, 1680 saw the publication of her second book, as magnificently illustrated as the first, this time with flowers copied directly from life. These excellent drawings were also used as models for embroidery and painting on silk and linen fabrics.
However, Merian's originality was not limited to her excellent books. At a time when most women naturalists stayed at home sorting out local plants and animals or those they received from abroad, she was able to undertake a long journey. In 1699, when she was 52 years old, she set sail with her daughter Dorothea for Suriname, the former Dutch Guiana, to collect and cultivate specimens of exotic flora and fauna. She may well have been the only European woman of this period to travel independently in the service of science, since most of the women who undertook natural history work during their travels at that time did so accompanying their fathers or husbands to the colonies.

Maria Merian's value is enhanced by the fact that she was not trained to go into the field or conduct major explorations, nor was she commissioned to go to Suriname by a scientific academy or commercial company. For most of her life, she financed her own research and scientific projects, although the mayor of Amsterdam paid for some of the expenses of her long and risky journey.

During Merian's two years in Suriname, she collected, studied and drew insects and plants of the region. Her initial idea was to spend a long period of time exploring these regions, but in 1701 she fell ill with malaria and had to return to Europe earlier than she had planned. She settled in Amsterdam and, when she recovered her health, she managed, with the collaboration of her daughter, to turn the results of her journey into a great scientific success, an extraordinary book entitled Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam, which was her main work and was published simultaneously in Latin and Dutch and soon translated into French. In sixty illustrations, Merian detailed the life cycle of caterpillars, worms, moths, butterflies, beetles, bees and flies. As Margaret Alic (1986) points out, this was an important work whose illustrations revealed to Europeans plants that had never before been described or drawn.

Merian's daughters were active collaborators who participated in the production of the excellent coloured illustrations and the magnificent engravings of their mother's books. The eldest, Johanna, later returned to Suriname and brought with her new specimens of insects and plants from which they created the drawings and engravings included in the second edition of Metamorphosis. After Maria Merian's death in 1717, her daughter Dorothea illustrated and published the third volume of her book on European entomology.

The Metamorphosis by Merian had great success and received multiple compliments on the part of her expert colleagues in Natural History. Between 1675 and 1771, her three books appeared in no fewer than nineteen editions. Her work achieved a great deal of popularity during the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. According to several sources, even the celebrated German writer Johann W. von Goethe (1749-1832) was astonished by the paintings of Maria S. Merian, highlighting her ability to find her way through Art and Science.

However, Merian's originality was not limited to her excellent books. Perhaps the most important contribution that this unique woman made to Entomology was to greatly enrich the empirical basis of the discipline with new discoveries. Proof of this is that nine butterflies and two beetles, as well as a total of six plants, were named after her. It should not be forgotten that one of the greatest honours a naturalist can receive is to have his or her name used to designate a new organism. Maria Sibylla Merian's work, as many current specialists recognise, was so well done, so rich and innovative, that for a long time it constituted a fundamental reference in the field of Entomology.

https://mujeresconciencia.com/2014/10/22/maria-sybilla-merian-una-valiente-entomologa/ 
 

Works

Bibliography

-Martínez Pulido, Carolina (2014) “María Sibylla Merian, una valiente entomóloga”. Mujeres con Ciencia. Universidad del País Vasco, January 2022

<https://mujeresconciencia.com/2014/10/22/maria-sybilla-merian-una-valiente-entomologa/> (04/04/2022)

Didactic approach

-She could be mentioned in visual and plastic arts.
-Biology-geology of 1st  and 3rd of ESO.

Documents