some stunning 17th century botanical illustrations

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…)

Merian illustration

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…

June 18 2008 04:57 am | Categories: art | Tags: •

One Response to “some stunning 17th century botanical illustrations”

  1. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » some plant ideas to borrow on 28 Aug 2008 at 4:33 am #

    […] posted ear­lier about their exhibit fea­tur­ing botan­i­cal illus­tra­tions by Maria Sibylla Mer­ian that continues […]

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