Maria Sibylla Merian's 366th Birthday.

Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717) was a naturalist and scientific illustrator who studied plants and insects and made detailed paintings about them. Her detailed observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly make her a significant, albeit not well known, contributor to entomology.

At the age of 13 she painted her first images of insects and plants from specimens she had captured.


Her first book, Neues Blumenbuch (New book of flowers) appeared in three parts in 1675-80.

In 1665 Merian married Marrel's apprentice, Johann Andreas Graff from NurembergWhile 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 patrician families (her "Jungferncompaney", i.e. virgin group), which helped the family financially, and increased their social standing. This provided her with access to the finest gardens, maintained by the wealthy and elite.In those gardens, Merian began studying insects, particularly the lifecycle of caterpillars and butterflies.








Merian worked as a botanic artist. She published three collections of engravings of plants in 1675, 1677 and 1680. Afterwards 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 the Netherlands she sold specimens she had collected and published a collection of engravings about the life in Surinam. In 1705 she published a book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium about the insects of Surinam.

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 20th 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.

Source: Wikipedia