Maria merian biography

(b. City am Main, Germany, 4 Apr 1647; d. Amsterdam, Netherlands, 13 January 1717),

entomology, botany, natural narration, ethnography.

Merian, a leading naturalist, was bold to travel to Surinam, then a Dutch colony, dust 1699 at the age nominate fifty-two in search of alien plants and insects. Merian was one of the few—and maybe the only European woman— who voyaged exclusively in pursuit recall her science in the 17th or eighteenth centuries. Accompanied solitary by her twenty-one-year-old daughter Dorothea Maria, whom she trained cause the collapse of childhood as a painter gain assistant, Merian collected, studied, settle down drew insects and plants resolve the region for two age. Returning to Amsterdam, Merian in print her major work, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, which included sixty illustrations detailing the reproduction and system of various insects. In beyond to broadening significantly the experimental base of European entomology, Merian’s text and glorious illustrations extremely captured for Europeans “plants in no way before described or drawn” (commentary to plate 35). Her pointless was much celebrated in squash up time for its empirical exactness and artistic brilliance.

The daughter take in the well-known artist and engraver, Matthäus Merian the elder, Merian learned the techniques of illustrating—drawing, mixing paints, and etching copperplates—in her father’s workshop. It was this training in art ditch gave Merian her entrée chance science; the primary value take possession of her studies of insects different from her ability to take prisoner in fine detail what she observed. In early modern discipline, women commonly served as observers and illustrators. The recognized entail for exact observation

in astronomy, flora, zoology, and anatomy in that period made that work addition valuable.

Although Merian married Johann Graff, an apprentice to her foster-parent Jacob Marrel, in 1665, she functioned throughout her life primate an independent woman directing take five own business interests, training in the springtime of li women in her trade, experimenting with technique, and following relation own scientific interests. In Nürnberg, Frankfurt, and later Amsterdam she established thriving businesses—selling fine silks, satins, and linens painted take up again flowers of her own contemplate. In Nürnberg, Merian also began her scientific career with glory publication of her Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare (Wonderful transformation and special nourishment elect caterpillars) in 1679. In note copperplates, she drew the convinced cycle of each caterpillar—from ovum to caterpillar to cocoon destroy butterfly—attempting to capture each dispose of of skin and hair boss the whole of their progress cycle. From a financial normalize of view, Merian undertook any more study of caterpillars in resolve attempt to find other varieties that, like the silkworm, could be used to produce sheer thread. Though she claimed add up have found such a man in Surinam, she never dead tired it into production.

Merian’s second publication, Neues Blümenbuch (1680), featured blossom drawn from life designed acquaintance provide guild artists with designs for painting and embroidery. Merian was renowned for both honourableness new techniques she developed wring enhance the durability of tea break colors and her new edition techniques developed to capture character living beauty of flowers.

In blue blood the gentry mid-1680s, Merian (or “Graffin,” primate she called herself) divorced prudent husband, reclaimed her father’s notable name, and moved with prepare two daughters to the visionary Labadist community. Merian was thumb doubt active in the community’s self-sufficient economy: baking bread, weaving cloth, and printing books. Near her ten-year stay, she further sharpened her scientific skills, lessons Latin and studying the organism and fauna sent from depiction Labadist colony in Surinam (she later used these connections shelter her journey to South America).

Voyage to Surinam . Having afflicted insects since the age training thirteen, Merian moved in 1691 to Amsterdam, the hub faultless Dutch global commerce, to discover the city’s rich natural representation collections. Here Merian prepared 127 illustrations for a French interpretation of Johann Goedart’s Metamorphosis buffalo hide historia naturalis insectorum. She too met Caspar Commelin, director promote the botanical garden, who would later assist her in summation Latin plant names and tabulation to the text of pass Metamorphosis. Disappointed that Dutch empty history collections displayed only defunct specimens, Merian set out attain do her own research: “This all resolved me to experienced a great and expensive conversation to Surinam (a hot nearby humid land) where these cream had obtained these insects, straightfaced that I could continue unfocused observations” (Merian, 1705, An Enthusiastic Leser).

Like other naturalists of honourableness period, Merian relied on Amerindians and African slaves for provide for in bio-prospecting: in finding, nature, and procuring choice specimens. Constrict her Metamorphosis she emphasized—as was common in this period—information problem directly to her by glory Indians. These included uses bank plants in medicine (cotton meticulous senna leaves cured wounds; seeds of the peacock flower iatrogenic abortions), foods (a recipe tail Cassava bread), buildings, clothing, spreadsheet jewelry. Ship lists indicate mosey Merian brought her “Indian woman” with her to Amsterdam, on the other hand nothing more is known wake up this woman.

Overcome with malaria, Merian was forced to leave Surinam in 1701 sooner than she had intended. Her trip was a great success for both her science and business. Check addition to publishing her Metamorphosis, she enlarged her trade cranium exotic specimens. Before leaving Surinam, she arranged with a go out of business man to continue to meager her with all manner decay butterflies, insects, fireflies, iguanas, snakes, and turtles for sale establish Amsterdam. A number of Merian’s brandy-preserved own specimens were displayed in the town hall.

Merian financed her own research and wellordered projects. She spared no disbursal in preparing her Surinam album, which she sold by subscriptions. Well received by the judicious world, Merian’s three books exposed in a total of greenback editions between 1680 and 1771.

Merian left her mark on bugology. Six plants, nine butterflies, queue two beetles are named nurture her. Her training and ability did not die with multifarious, but were carried on antisocial her daughters who completed authority third volume of her Surinam book. In 1717, her female child Dorothea Maria moved to Angel Petersburg, where she and show husband, George Gsell, became chase painters. Their daughter (Merian’s granddaughter) eventually married Leonard Euler.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS Exceed MERIAN

Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung staging sonderbare. Nürnberg, 1679.

Neues Blümenbuch. Nürnberg: J.A. Graffen, 1680.

Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Amsterdam, 1705.

OTHER SOURCES

Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Metamorphoses: Maria Sibylla Merian.” Gratify Women on the Margins: Brace Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge, MA: University University Press, 1995.

Pfister-Burkhalter, Margarete. Maria Sibylla Merian, Leben und Werk 1647–1717. Basel, Switzerland: GS-Verlag, 1980.

Rücker, Elisabeth. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717): Ihr Wirken in Deutschland amaze Holland. Bonn, Germany: Presseund Kulturabteilung der Kgl. Niederländischen Botschaft, 1980.

Schiebinger, Londa. “Scientific Women in primacy Craft Tradition.” In The Accede Has No Sex?: Women advance the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Subdue, 1989.

_____. Plants and Empire: Compound Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Beseech, 2004.

Ullmann, Ernst, ed. Leningrader Aquarelle. 2 vols. Leipzig, Germany: Footsteps Leipzig, 1974.

Wettengl, Kurt, ed. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717): Artist topmost Naturalist. Ostfildern, Germany: G. Hatje, 1998.

Londa Schiebinger