Artefact Unearthing treasures from the Daniel Solander Library

A STUDY IN TRANSFIGURATION

AMONG THE DANIEL SOLANDER LIBRARY’S MANY FASCINATING BOOKS IS A WORK BY A PIONEERING FEMALE SCIENTIST WHO ADVANCED OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURAL WORLD. MIGUEL GARCIA REPORTS.

Last year UNESCO published a report highlighting the many obstacles female scientists around the world face when it comes to gaining recognition and representation. Given that in the 21st century woman are still struggling to overcome gender bias, it’s difficult to understate the achievements of Maria Sibylla Merian.

A dedicated naturalist, brilliant scientific artist and engraver, and author of many works on flowers and insects, Merian advanced science’s understanding of the process of metamorphosis – and accomplished all of this almost 350 years ago.

Born in Frankfurt in 1647 to a Swiss-based patrician family, Merian received her artistic training from her stepfather Jacob Marrel, a well-known flower and still life painter. As a girl she became fascinated with caterpillar larvae, illustrating their food plants and the timing of their metamorphoses. At the time, insects were still reputed to be "beasts of the devil" and the process and detail of metamorphosis was largely unknown. A handful of scholars had published empirical information on the insect, moth and butterfly life cycle, but it was still widely believed that these creatures were "born of mud" through spontaneous generation. Merian documented evidence to the contrary and described the life cycles of 186 insect species.

After marrying in 1665, Merian had her first child, Johanna Helena, in 1668 and shortly thereafter moved to Nuremberg, where she gave drawing lessons to daughters of wealthy families. The work provided her with access to the city’s finest gardens, where she continued documenting insects.

Merian ultimately observed the life cycles of insects over decades, making detailed drawings based on live insects in their natural environment or freshly preserved specimens. By drawing live insects, she could accurately depict colours, however, because the European guild system barred women from painting in oil, she was forced to work only in watercolours and gouache.

In 1675, after learning copperplate engraving, she published an illustrated three-volume series on flowers, followed in 1679 by the first of a two-volume series on caterpillars. Largely ignored

Maria Sibylla Merian portrayed by Jacob Marrel (1679)

by scientists of the time, the work was innovative in its detailed study of the life cycles and habitats of insects, moths, butterflies and larvae. It also depicted physical differences between male and female adults and contained illustrations of eggs – a feature previous naturalists had not included.

Merian’s marriage was not a successful one. In the mid-1680s she moved away from her husband and became involved with a religious sect in the Netherlands that forbade her to draw or paint but permitted her to continue studying natural history and Latin. By 1692 she was divorced and had left the sect for Amsterdam, where Johanna had married a merchant in the Suriname trade.

This familial contact led to the 52-year -old Merian – along with her younger daughter Dorothea Maria – being granted permission in 1699 to travel to the Dutch colony, self-funded, to illustrate new species of insects. Scientific expeditions were uncommon, and Merian became the first European woman to independently embark on a scientific voyage to South America. Not until the 19th century did other women follow in her footsteps.

Merian spent two years travelling throughout the colony, during which she documented a range of unknown animals and plants. She recorded native names for the plants and described local uses. She also described the insects she found, and meticulously noted their habitat, behaviour and uses to Indigenous people. Her classification of butterflies and moths is still relevant today.

In 1701, illness forced Merian to return to the Netherlands, where she opened a shop selling specimens collected in Suriname, along with her engravings of the colony’s plant and animal life. Then in 1705 she published Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, funding the project by offering subscribers hand-painted deluxe editions in exchange for advance payments.

While Merian's depiction of insect life cycles was innovative in its accuracy, it was her observations on the interaction of organisms and plants that are now regarded as her major contribution to the modern science of ecology. She was the first to show that each stage of a caterpillar’s change to a butterfly depended on a small number of plants for nourishment, and that as a consequence their eggs were laid near these plants.

As well as pairing each larva with the plant on which it feeds, she made other important observations. In relation to larvae, for instance, she recorded that "many shed their skins completely three or four times", providing illustrations of the cast-off exoskeletons. She also detailed the ways in which larvae formed cocoons, and the possible effects of climate on metamorphosis.

In 1715 Merian was partially paralysed by a stroke but continued to work until her death in Amsterdam in January 1717.

Her drawings became part of the corpus of scientific exploration by Europeans. Early taxonomy of tropical plants relied on images or specimens and following her return to Amsterdam the images she had made were used by Carl Linnaeus and others to identify more than a hundred new species.

In the late 20th century, Merian’s work was re-evaluated and reprinted. Today she is commemorated with 14 species and two genera of organisms named after her. Her portrait was also printed on Germany’s 500 Deutschmark note and she was even honoured with a Google Doodle on 2 April 2013 to mark her 366th birth anniversary.

In 2016, Merian's Surinamensium was re-published with updated scientific descriptions. A copy - donated by Foundation and Friends’ member Barrington Kinnaird - may be seen in the Daniel Solander Library.