Maria Sibylla Merian’s insects of Suriname

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was a German artist and scientist who studied plants and insects and made detailed drawings of them. In Amsterdam in 1705 she published perhaps the most beautiful nature book ever produced, titled Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium.

From a young age Maria Sibyll Merian studied the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies, and she published her findings in her book Studienbuch. Merian later became one of the first artists to draw insects, and the very first to illustrate the plants on which they lived.

Maria Sibylla Merian’s father was Matthäus Merian the Elder, a publisher and artist based in Frankfurt. Her mother Johanna Sibylla Heim came from a Walloon church minister’s family. Merian learned to draw and etch from her stepfather Jacob Marrel, a German artist working in the Netherlands who was well known for his floral paintings.

Maria Sibylla Merian travelled to the Netherlands several times with her stepfather. In 1685 she settled in a Protestant Labadist community in Friesland. After moving to Amsterdam in 1691, Merian’s knowledge and interests soon brought her into contact with well-known nature lovers in the city.

In 1699, Merian and her youngest daughter Dorothea Maria Graff travelled to Suriname. There she made many drawings and watercolours of caterpillars and butterflies, various other animals, and plants. She became ill in 1701, possibly with malaria, and returned to the Netherlands with her daughter.

Upon her return to Amsterdam, Merian got to work on publishing her drawings. 1705 saw the publication of Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, an impressive volume more than half a metre in height containing 60 hand-coloured engravings of the insects of Suriname. Buyers could choose whether the accompanying text was in Dutch or Latin.

While making the illustrations that appear in the book, Merian frequently drew on the knowledge of Suriname’s original inhabitants and the enslaved people living there. They collected plants and insects for Merian and helped her identify and name them. In her notes she repeatedly remarked on the mistreatment of enslaved people by the Dutch.

The book was published in two versions: one made using a standard printing technique and the other using the counterproof method. The counterproof method involved passing the still-wet prints of each engraving through the press a second time, which produced very fine lines and an image that was almost indistinguishable from the original watercolour.

One of the most iconic images in the book is the illustration of a ripe pineapple and the life-cycle of the Philaethria dido butterfly. Here, Merian succeeds in depicting her central subject in a scientific, almost ecological, way, without sacrificing the reader’s sensory experience of the pineapple. It testifies to her exceptional abilities as both a scientist and an artist.

In 1716 and 1717, Tsar Peter the Great of Russia bought several books by Merian from her daughter Dorothea Maria Graff and Dorothea’s husband Georg Gsell. These volumes, Studienbuch among them, are now held in the collection of the scientific academy in Saint Petersburg.