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Anniversary: Maria Sibylla Merian and metamorphosis

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 1, Article number: 0074 (2017) Cite this article

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At the age of 18, Merian married an apprentice of Marrel, Johann Andreas Graff, who supported the publication of two volumes of her book5 on the development of caterpillars and their host plants (Der Raupen Wunderbare Verwandelung). The marriage was unhappy, and in 1685 Graff and Merian separated. With her two daughters and her mother, Merian joined the Labadists, a Christian sect in Friesland, Netherlands, where she continued to paint insects and plants, and educated her daughters. In 1691, Merian relocated to Amsterdam, where she worked as a teacher and painter, and became acquainted with the tropical fauna and flora imported from the Dutch colony of Suriname4.

In 1699, Merian, accompanied by her younger daughter, travelled to Suriname with the aim of collecting and painting living specimens of tropical animals and plants, supported by a grant from the city of Amsterdam. After two years exploration of South American forests, Merian contracted malaria and was forced to return to Amsterdam. Three years later, Merian published her masterpiece, the Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, wherein she described and depicted hundreds of tropical plants and animals6. Despite the fact that Merian was a deeply religious woman who praised the “creations of the Biblical God” in her published work5,6, she also depicted the merciless “struggle for existence” in much of her work (Fig. 2). Like Carl Linnaeus, who later based descriptions of several insect species on Merian's illustrations, she was a ‘theistic naturalist’, who did not, however, mix up scientific facts with religious dogma.

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Figure 1

GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Figure 2: Merian's paintings.

References

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  1. Ulrich Kutschera is professor of plant physiology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kassel, Germany.,

    Ulrich Kutschera

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  1. Ulrich Kutschera
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Correspondence to Ulrich Kutschera.

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Kutschera, U. Anniversary: Maria Sibylla Merian and metamorphosis. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0074 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0074

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