Curriculum Materials: Amazing Animals in
Art
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Maria Sibylla Merian Essays: Questions: |
Maria Sibylla Merian
Born in 1647 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to a Swiss
father and a Dutch mother, Merian grew up in a home filled
with artistic and literary activity. Her father, who died
when she was three, was a noted engraver who published one
of the first catalogs of different flower species. Her
mother's second husband was a Dutch flower painter, Jacob
Marell, with whom Merian studied. In 1665 she married one of
her stepfather's pupils, the artist Johann Graff, and
settled with him in Nuremberg. Their first daughter was born
in 1668, and a second daughter in 1678.
In Nuremberg, Merian began methodically to explore and paint
the world of nature, studying living examples of European
butterflies and moths. She published her resulting
illustrations, which were enthusiastically received by the
scientific community.
Merian left her husband in 1685 and, with her two daughters,
made a series of moves, living for a time in Friesland,
Germany, and then in Amsterdam. In 1699 she set sail for
Surinam, where she spent two years, until a bout with yellow
fever forced her to return to Amsterdam. The results of her
trip were more than a 100 watercolors painted on vellum,
most of which are now in the British Museum. Many of these
were engraved for the volume Metamorphosis Insectorum
Surinamensium. Merian next turned her attention to
completing a final volume of her European insect book. She
suffered a stroke in 1714 and died in 1717.
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