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By Ellie Cawthorne\n \t\t<\/p>
Published: Friday, 04 February 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>
Somewhere in the bustling streets of 17th-century Frankfurt, a teenage girl was keeping watch over her collection of caterpillars, making detailed notes and sketches as they shed their skins \u201cjust as a person pulls off a shirt over his head\u201d.<\/p>\n
This batch of silkworms was the latest of many that she had reared in small paper houses, in a slow process of trial and error. But nursing them to maturity was no easy task. \u201cYou must take great pains to care for them,\u201d noted the girl. \u201cIf a storm comes, you must cover them; otherwise they will get jaundice and dropsy. They will also die when you give them too much to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n
The curiosity, diligence and determination shown by Maria Sibylla Merian in raising these caterpillars into pearly white moths would grow as the years passed into something new, much like those tiny subjects of her fascination. The girl who kept a caterpillar collection would become a pioneering naturalist, who travelled to unexplored lands in search of natural wonders, and reimagine the ways that insects and plants could be illustrated.<\/p>\n
Born in 1647, Merian was inducted into the art world from a young age. Her father Mattha\u0308us ran a respected Frankfurt printing house, then after his death, her mother married the still-life painter and art dealer Jacob Marrel.<\/p>\n
Although her gender meant that she couldn\u2019t become an official apprentice, Merian picked up painting techniques from her encouraging stepfather, and learnt engraving from her elder half-brothers.<\/p>\n
Merian combined her two passions for art and nature, collecting insects for her stepfather to paint and drawing flowers… her medium was watercolours, seen as a suitably feminine artistic pursuit at the time <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>Early on, Merian combined her two passions for art and nature, collecting insects for her stepfather to paint and drawing flowers \u201cdecorated with caterpillars and summer birds [butterflies]\u2026 like the landscape painters do\u201d. Her medium was watercolours, seen as a suitably feminine artistic pursuit at the time.<\/p>\n
Aged 18, Merian married Johann Andreas Graff, an apprentice of her stepfather. Whether she married out of love, obligation or in search of further freedoms, she clearly intended to continue working despite her change in marital status.<\/p>\n
Financial success as a nature painter<\/h3>\n
In 1668, the couple \u2013 now with a young daughter in tow \u2013 moved to Nuremberg. Here, Merian took on a number of female art students and created decorative prints of marigolds, irises and hyacinths for them to copy. These delicate designs proved so popular that she compiled them in what would become her first publication: Blumenbuch<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Sold in bundles, Merian\u2019s flower prints were a financial success, and her reputation as a nature painter grew. In 1675, a survey of German artists by art historian Joachim von Sandrart noted that she was known for \u201call kinds of decorations composed of flowers, fruit and birds, in particular also the excrement of worms, flies, gnats, spiders\u2026 works like these seemed to emerge from her hands daily\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Her floral prints were profitable, but Merian had her sights set on a more scientifically ambitious project. In 1679, a year after the birth of her second daughter, she published Caterpillars, Their Wondrous Metamorphosis and Peculiar Nourishment from Flowers<\/em>. Intended to benefit \u201cexplorers of nature, art painters and lovers of gardens\u201d, this volume represented a novel way of illustrating nature, showing Merian\u2019s beloved insects as just one part of a rich, interconnected ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Bordered with silkworms perched on mulberry branches, the frontispiece proudly declared how the behaviours and development of \u201ccaterpillars, worms, summer birds, moths, flies and other such creatures\u201d inside were \u201cdiligently studied, briefly described from nature, painted, engraved in copper and published by Maria Sibylla Graff herself.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Merian\u2019s artistic career was going from strength to strength, her marriage had begun to founder. By 1685, Graff had left his wife and daughters with Merian\u2019s mother in Frankfurt and travelled back to Nuremberg alone. The separation would prove permanent. For Merian that meant forgoing the security that had come with marriage and embracing a different kind of life entirely.<\/p>\n
In 1685, the Merian women travelled north to the isolated Waltha Castle in the Netherlands. This was home to her half-brother Caspar and the Labadists, the religious sect he belonged to. It was an austere existence, with members expected to renounce all luxury for a life of communal work and religious devotion. Nevertheless, Merian made the most of the absence of distractions to continue her investigations.<\/p>\n
In her mind, scientific enquiry was not at odds with religious devotion. Instead, she was ‘full of praise at God\u2019s mysterious power and the wonderful attention he pays to such insignificant little creatures’ <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>She copied out two decades\u2019 worth of notebooks, documented parasites and dissected frogs. In her mind, scientific enquiry was not at odds with religious devotion. Instead, she was \u201cfull of praise at God\u2019s mysterious power and the wonderful attention he pays to such insignificant little creatures,\u201d and saw recording their beauty as a way to honour Him, \u201cglorifying him as the creator of even the smallest and humblest of these worms\u201d.<\/p>\n
The restrained yet peaceful life Merian enjoyed there came under threat when her estranged husband suddenly appeared at the castle gates. She was able to reject Graff\u2019s pleas for a reunion \u2013 thanks to the Labadists who declared their marriage void \u2013 and this may well have been the last time the pair ever saw one another.<\/p>\n
Over the years that followed, the Labadist way of life began to fall apart, as the community became plagued by infighting and disease. In 1691, Merian decided to leave her life of quiet contemplation behind. She chose a new home that could hardly have been more different: Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
Taking the plunge<\/h3>\n
The bustling city seemed an ideal base for a curious mind such as hers, and Merian soon found herself at the heart of a global hub for art, science and commerce. Thinkers debated the latest ideas in coffee shops, while merchants bartered over exotic goods shipped from all over the world.<\/p>\n
The city had more relaxed laws surrounding women\u2019s work, and Merian was able to court wealthy patrons; in an effort to shake off her past, she began signing letters with her maiden name.<\/p>\n
Yet, despite all the city had to offer, Merian struggled to settle. Even the dazzling specimens and natural oddities of the city\u2019s plentiful curiosity cabinets left her cold, the \u201ccountless insects\u201d rigidly displayed \u201cin a manner that lacked both their place of origin and how they reproduced\u201d.<\/p>\n
Disproving the theory of \u2018spontaneous generation\u2019<\/h4>\n
Maria Sibylla Merian had a fascination with insect metamorphosis \u2013 depicting insects in all their stages of life \u2013 and was just as interested in the pupa and chrysalis as the beautiful butterfly that emerged. It would help bring about a significant advance in the study of nature.<\/p>\n
One popular scientific theory that Merian\u2019s illustrations worked to disprove was \u2018spontaneous generation\u2019 \u2013 the idea that organisms could originate from non-living matter. As such, it was thought that maggots were formed from old meat and moths from old wool, while wasps, with their fierce stings, were thought to emerge from flames. Some people even believed that toads appeared from mud when water was thrown on the ground.<\/p>\n
Although this theory dated all the way back to Aristotle, it was still under debate during Merian\u2019s lifetime. In 1668, Italian scientist Francesco Redi came up with an experiment to disprove those who still claimed that there was something in the idea of spontaneous generation.<\/p>\n
He took two pieces of rotting meat, covering one and leaving the other exposed. As Redi had suspected, maggots only appeared on the uncovered meat, suggesting they appeared through contact with flies, rather than being formed from the meat itself.<\/p>\n
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For Merian, who was so used to documenting animals in their natural habitat, Amsterdam\u2019s urban environment felt stilted. It \u201clacked the opportunity to search specifically for that which is found in the fens and heath\u201d, and her mind turned to more exotic adventures.<\/p>\n
Finally, she took the plunge, putting 255 of her paintings up for sale to fund a daring voyage half way across the world.<\/p>\n
In 1699, the 52-year-old Merian boarded a ship bound for Suriname, a Dutch colony on the coast of South America. With her she took a collection of dark-headed caterpillars and her younger daughter, Dorothea.<\/p>\n
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Merian had most likely heard about Suriname from her time in Amsterdam, and the Labadists, who had established an outpost there. Members of the religious community returned armed with dazzling specimens and tales of natural wonders. However, they also told of danger and hardship, such as blistering thunderstorms, crippling temperatures, leprosy and even pirates.<\/p>\n
Governed by the Dutch since 1667, Suriname was dominated by sugar plantations powered by slave labour. Merian complained that Europeans there \u201cmocked me for seeking anything other than sugar\u201d. But for her, the country\u2019s real riches lay elsewhere.<\/p>\n
The natural wonders she found along with Dorothea were bountiful, from vanilla orchids and pineapples to scarlet ibis and tarantulas large enough to eat hummingbirds. The pair set up home in the small settlement of Paramaribo, where, unfamiliar with the climate and customs, they relied on the help of local Amerindian women. As well as providing domestic help, these women were knowledgeable guides to the forest, bringing Merian lantern flies and guavas and showing her which plants were medicinal and which poisonous.<\/p>\n
The natural wonders she found in Suriname along with Dorothea were bountiful, from vanilla orchids and pineapples to scarlet ibis and tarantulas large enough to eat hummingbirds <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>After studying life in their garden and on plantations, the women embarked on long insect-hunting expeditions into the rainforest. In spring 1700, they left the security of town and travelled several days upriver, past basking caiman and maroon communities, to the old Labadist outpost of La Providence, on the hunt for new species.<\/p>\n
Merian documented her adventures as she \u201cwandered far out into the wilderness,\u201d uncovering insects whose exotic beauty \u201ccannot possibly be rendered with the paintbrush\u201d. This was a land where butterflies looked \u201clike polished silver overlaid with the loveliest ultramarine, green and purple\u201d and mammoth white witch moths flapped through the tropical jungles on 11-inch wingspans.<\/p>\n