Maria Sibylla Merian, The Caterpillar, Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food (1683)
Abstract
These illustrations are taken from Maria Sibylla Merian’s The Caterpillar, Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food [Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung/ und sonderbare Blumennahrung], where they appear as plates 8, 21, and 34. The illustrations show insects in their various stages of development – from caterpillar and cocoon to butterfly. They also introduce the plants that served as their main food sources. A true artist-naturalist, Merian sketched and colored these delicate copperplate images herself, having based them on observations recorded in her Leningrader Studienbuch [Leningrad Book of Notes and Studies]. Merian’s rare combination of aesthetic and scientific talents set her apart from her peers.
Source
Source: Maria Sibylla Merian, Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung/ und sonderbare Blumen-nahrung : worinnen/ durch eine gantz-neue Erfindung/ Der Raupen/ Würmer/ Sommer-vögelein/ Motten/ Fliegen/ und anderer dergleichen Thierlein/ Ursprung/ Speisen/ und Veränderungen/ samt ihrer Zeit/ Ort/ und Eigenschaften, Volume 2. Frankfurt/Main and Nuremberg, 1683, Plates 8, 21, 34. ThULB. Available online at: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:urmel-23d3a153-f50f-4176-b13c-df30790ba79a3
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Further Reading
Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Carin Martins, Maria Sibylla Merian zwischen Malerei und Naturforschung: Pflanzen- und Schmetterlingsbilder neu entdeckt. Berlin: Reimer, 2017.
Anne-Charlott Trepp, Von der Glückseligkeit alles zu wissen: Die Erforschung der Natur als religiöse Praxis in der Frühen Neuzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2009, pp. 210-305.
Kurt Wettengl, Maria Sibylla Merian: 1647-1717; Künstlerin und Naturforscherin. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013.