The German artist and natural historian Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) was a remarkable woman who, as a single mother, earned her living as an artist and travelled to South America in search of new specimens to paint. She came from a family of artists — her father was an engraver, and both her stepfather and her husband were painters.

Maria had a keen eye for nature and as a child kept silkworms so that she could record their development in her paintings of flowers and insects.

She published many books of her own, although the painting of coconut crabs shown here was one of the illustrations she made for Georg Eberhard Rumpf's book D'Amboinsche Rariteitkammer.

Many of Maria's original paintings were purchased by Tsar Peter the Great for his art museum in St Petersburg, Russia. They are now available to a wider audience in Maria Sibylla Merian: The St Petersburg Watercolours (Prestel, £55).