Merian’s Metamorphosis
A closer look at the art and science of illustrator and pioneering entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian
It’s hard to believe that around 400 years ago, when the Royal Society was first established in London by Charles II, people still believed in the theory of ‘spontaneous generation’ — that maggots arose from rotting meat, swallows from mud, and caterpillars from cabbages. It seems that nobody had watched caterpillars hatch from eggs, devour leaves they were laid upon, turn into pupa then emerge as moth or butterfly that then repeated this glorious life cycle — until Maria Sibylla Merian.
Although she has been commemorated on German banknotes, Merian is often overlooked today as both artist and naturalist. Yet she was the first to depict, in the same image, the full life cycle of the eggs, caterpillar, pupae and adult form of an insect. The first of these illustrations was of the silk moth, which she first began to study at the age of 13. Her innovative approach became the accepted method for naturalists and is widely seen in scientific illustration, identification guides, botanical and decorative art, to this day.
Merian was born in Frankfurt, 1647, into a family of artists and printers. Her father was the engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian the Elder. When he died, her mother married…
