American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: American Museum of Natural History

Merian, Maria Sibylla, 1647-1717
birth: 1647 April 2
death: 1717 January 13
Maria Sibylla Merian, (born April 2, 1647, Frankfurt - died January 13, 1717, Amsterdam) was a naturalist and artist in the area of entomology. She made her scientific illustrations by observing insects from life, one of the first to do so. Her work in botanicals, butterflies, and caterpillars are some of her most widely known publications.
Maria Sibylla Merian, artist and naturalist, was born in 1647 to engraver Matthäus Merian and Johanna Sybilla Heyne in Frankfurt, Germany (1). Following the death of Merian’s father, when she was 3, her mother married Jacob Marrel in 1651 (1). Marrel, an artist, encouraged Maria to paint and arranged for an art student train her and by age 11 she had created her first copper plate (1). In addition to painting botanicals, Merian was a keen observer and collector of insects, and she illustrated her observations throughout the insect lifecycle, raising her own silkworms and beginning an observation journal at the age of 13, during a time when this was not a widely accepted activity for a woman (1). Merian married artist Johann Andreas Graff in the spring of 1665 who was establishing himself as an engraver and art dealer (2). They settled in Nuremburg and had two daughters, Johanna and Dorothea, who were born ten years apart (3). There Merian painted, conducted art lessons for unmarried young women, made embroidery and copperplate engravings, and published a book of flower patterns (2).
After the deaths of her step father and mother, Merian moved to a religious Labadist community in Freisland in the Netherlands and studied Latin, the language of science, as well as animals and insects in nature before moving to Amsterdam where she sold artwork and her eldest daughter married a man who was a trader in Surinam (2, 4). In 1675 and 1677 Merian published a book of flower plates, Blumenbucher (2, 4). At age 52, in 1699, Merian made a journey to Suriname, where she planned to collect, study, illustrate and document the plants, animals, and insects she found there. Her youngest daughter, Dorothea, aged 21 at the time, traveled with her. Though the intention was to stay for 5 years, illness from malaria forced her return to the Netherlands by 1701 (2, 4). Three years later, in 1705 she published Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, her most famous and arguably her most important work which documented the observations she made in Suriname, and which she published at her own expense in a large folio format with more than 60 color plates accompanied by text (3).
Maria Sibylla Merian’s work was pivotal in several ways as she was the first European woman to embark upon scientific field work in South America, she largely funded her own journey, and she documented the species she found in great scientific detail with rich information on the use of a variety of plants and insects by the people of Suriname (2). Later, well known male scientific illustrators, Such as Mark Catesby, documented her work in their publications. Merian continued to sell her paintings and specimens she collected on her expeditions after Suriname. Her works have been published in many editions and scientists such as taxonomist Carl Linnaeus cited and used Merian’s drawings and classifications to help identify many species (3).
Merian suffered a stroke in 1715 and died in Amsterdam in 1717 at the age of 69 (4). After her death, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium was translated and reprinted in 1719, 1726 and 1730 (1) .