Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) is the subject of an exhibition at L.A.’s Getty Museum running through August 31. A German entomologist and painter of the natural world, Merian produced a number of amazingly detailed and wonderful illustrations for her books. The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname, her major work, presents work deriving from two years of illustrating and collecting she and a daughter she did in South America. (That trip sounds like it must have been an amazing story: a mother and her daughter, selling everything they owned, to leave Europe to do science in the wilds all the way across the world–all that circa 1700…)

Maria Sibylla Merian. A plate taken from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium [ source ]

The book has great images of bugs–as you might imagine. But she portrayed the bugs in symbiosis with the plant world around them. As a consequence, the botanical images are also amazing.



Maria Sibylla Merian. A blue honey creeper on a thistle, copulating snails below [ source ]

There are a number of new and used books by Merian, as well as several original paintings or engravings, available through AbeBooks. These are important works, so to buy an original illustration or early edition might set you back a couple of bucks…