Maria Sibylla Merian

Więcej o książce

Edited by Kurt Wettengl. Texts by Sam Segal, Heidrun Ludwig and Elisabeth Rucker among others. This book is the first to comprehensively chronicle the exquisitely rendered work of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), the German-born naturalist who is recognized as perhaps the greatest scientific and botanical illustrator of all time, and whose life was one of extraordinary independence, self-reliance, and accomplishment. The daughter of a prominent publisher, she was drawn at an early age to the study of insects, and as a teenager began a systematic study of the then-little-known subject of butterflies. Precociously gifted, she received training in art from her stepfather, who had been a student of the first German still life painter. Her lepidopteran preoccupation would eventually take her to the Dutch colony of Surinam, where she made taxonomies of that locale's exotic specimens. Her depictions of the butterfly metamorphosis have long been admired by scholars and art lovers alike. An entrepreneur, Merian taught art to women, traded in insects and reptiles she preserved herself, and published books of her detailed engravings and watercolors.