Heroine of the Month (November): Maria Sibylla Merian, Scientist & Artist

In the Age of Enlightenment that followed the Renaissance, the very concept of film had not yet developed. The digital camera would have been laughed at as a child's fantasy (if anyone could, in fact, have imagined such a thing). Travel was slow ... journeys were both painfully perilous and perilously painful.

But the Enlightenment was a lively age marked by scientific curiosity; the deep impulse to explore the world -- the universe! -- and find out what made it tick.

Modern science was being born. Specialties and disciplines and credentials were not carved in stone, so genius arose from unexpected places.

Our heroine for November brought a larger world to scientists and students of botany and zoology, raising their base of knowledge. And she left works of enduring -- and scientifically accurate -- beauty for us to enjoy.

Maria Sibylla Merian was born on 2 April 1647, in Frankfurt-on-the-Maine, Germany, just as the Renaissance was giving way to the Age of Enlightenment. Maria was born to the second wife of Matthäus Merian the Elder, prominent publisher of natural history texts.

Maria had no inclination to involve herself in the publishing business. She focused on her scientific and artistic leanings, and she came by those naturally. From the time she could first handle a brush or pen, she drew the plants and animals she saw around her.

Maria's father died when she was 3 years old. The following year, Maria's mother married Flemish flower painter Jacob Martell, who became Maria's first, and highly supportive, teacher. Martell often had to travel on business, and on those occasions he entrusted one of his students, Abraham Mignon, to take over the lessons.

Maria wrote at the age of 13, "I collected all the caterpillars I could find in order to study their metamorphosis. I therefore withdrew from society and devoted myself to these investigations."

She began journaling regularly at the age of 16 and continued until she was 69. Somewhere during the intervening centuries, Maria's journal was lost. It resurfaced in 1976 and was published in the original German.

Maria married the artist, Johannes Andreas Graff, in 1665. The couple continued to live in Frankfurt, and their first daughter, Johanna Helena, was born in 1668. In 1670 the family moved to Nuremberg. Their second daughter, Dorothea Maria, was born in 1678.

Women were not permitted to earn money as painters in "Enlightened" Germany. But women could produce and publish "models for embroidery." As a young woman in her early twenties, Maria took advantage of this loophole to publish her first effort, Flowerbook.

She also built her own business -- selling silks handpainted with her designs. She employed female apprentices. The group carefully experimented on pigments and created lasting paints that would not harm the silk.

This led to a fascination with the creation of silk, at the worm level. Could other insect larvae -- caterpillars -- also produce a silk that could be grown locally? She gathered caterpillars and cared for them, but did not find a local silk producing creature in the lot. Instead, Maria found the inspiration for a treatise: The Wonderful Metamorphosis and Special Nourishment of Caterpillars.

She also continued the practice, whenever possible, of capturing and caring for live creatures for use as models, rather than relying on the more conventional practice of working from preserved specimens.

Single Working Mom

With the writing of her first treatise, Maria Sibylla Merian also discovered a new calling: highly gifted women could also serve as scientific illustrators. Maria left her husband in 1685. After a ten-year detour in a strict Labadist religious commune, Maria moved to Amsterdam, where she supported herself and her two young daughters with her scientific illustrations.

Both of Maria's daughters grew to pursue careers in illustration, both in collaboration with their mother and in their own right.

Women simply did not travel without a male escort in the Enlightened Age. Evidently, Maria Sibylla Merian did not get the memo. At the age of 52, Maria embarked with her youngest daughter, Dorothea Maria, on a male-free cruise to the Dutch colony of Surinam in South America -- a voyage three months long.

There, Maria and Dorothea studied native plants, insects, reptiles and amphibians in their native habitat. Working with dried imports just would not do.

And there, regrettably, they also owned slaves. Maria was, however, appalled at the way many slaves were treated in Surinam, and spoke out against the cruelty.

Maria had intended a five-year stay, but malaria forced her to return to Amsterdam after only two years.

In 1705, Maria published her most significant work, Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam, in Latin and Dutch Because animal classification was not yet written in scientific stone, the book included studies of frogs and caimans and snakes. A posthumous edition appeared later, under the title, Dissertation in Insect Generations and Metamorphosis in Surinam.

Maria produced illustrations well into old age. In 1717, Maria Sybilla Merian died from a stroke. At the time she had been in negotiations with the personal physician of Czar Peter the Great of Russia for possession of her work. The negotiations did not move fast enough, and Maria was listed as a pauper after her death. She did, however, manage to escape a pauper's communal burial.

On the day Maria was buried, the physician arranged to ship some of her papers, and her personal study book, to St. Petersburg. A year later, Dorothea Maria received a commission to paint specimens in that city.

The former Soviet Union released some of Maria's original work in the 1970s. Interest in her work continues to flourish. Eighteenth Century editions of her books and vintage prints command handsome prices.

(All illustrations are public domain.)