Etheridge, Kay (Author)
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Volume: 35, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 16-22
Known primarily for creating beautiful images of butterflies and flowers, Maria Sibylla Merian (German, 1647--1717) has remained largely unappreciated for her seminal contribution to early modern natural history. Merian was indeed a talented artist, but she clearly thought of herself as a naturalist, and employed both text and images to depict lepidopteran metamorphosis and behavior with unprecedented accuracy and detail. Merian documented larvae and adult insects feeding not only on plants, but also on other animals, and she depicted other creatures preying on insects. An image of battling spiders and ants and the accompanying text in her 1705 Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium illuminated the world of tropical arthropods in a way that was groundbreaking, and set the stage for a new way to envision nature.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Ogilvie, Brian W.;
(2008)
Nature's Bible: Insects in Seventeenth-Century European Art and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001021790/)
Chapter
Jorink, Eric;
(2011)
Beyond the Lines of Apelles: Johannes Swammerdam, Dutch Scientific Culture and the Representation of Insect Anatomy
(/isis/citation/CBB001201617/)
Thesis
Pick, Cecilia Mary;
(2004)
Rhetoric of the Author Presentation: The Case of Maria Sibylla Merian
(/isis/citation/CBB001561779/)
Book
Attenborough, David;
Owens, Susan;
Clayton, Martin;
Alexandratos, Rea;
(2007)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery
(/isis/citation/CBB000772794/)
Book
Kay Etheridge;
(2020)
The Flowering of Ecology: Maria Sibylla Merian’s Caterpillar Book
(/isis/citation/CBB477782885/)
Book
Neri, Janice;
(2011)
The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500--1700
(/isis/citation/CBB001221160/)
Article
E. Charles Nelson;
(2023)
New identifications of natural history images on the “Bodleian Plate”, an early eighteenth-century engraved copperplate
(/isis/citation/CBB367812823/)
Chapter
Etheridge, Kay;
(2011)
Maria Sibylla Merian: The First Ecologist?
(/isis/citation/CBB001221547/)
Thesis
Kinukawa, Tomomi;
(2001)
Art Competes with Nature: Maria Sibylla Merian (1647--1717) and the Culture of Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001560512/)
Article
Pyenson, Lewis;
(2011)
The Enlightened Image of Nature in the Dutch East Indies: Consequences of Postmodernist Doctrine for Broad Structures and Intimate Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001022672/)
Book
Olsen, Penny;
(2008)
A Brush with Birds: Australian Bird Art from the National Library of Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001033757/)
Chapter
Hochstrasser, Julie Berger;
(2010)
The Butterfly Effect: Embodied Cognition and Perceptual Knowledge in Maria Sibylla Merian's Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium
(/isis/citation/CBB001000156/)
Article
Sietske Fransen;
(2019)
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen
(/isis/citation/CBB238881930/)
Book
Gilbert, Pamela;
(2000)
Butterfly Collectors and Painters: Four Centuries of Colour Plates from The Library Collections of the National History Museum, London
(/isis/citation/CBB000500003/)
Article
Roos, Anna Marie Eleanor;
Edwin D. Rose;
(2018)
Lives and Afterlives of the Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia (1699), The First Illustrated Field Guide to English Fossils
(/isis/citation/CBB973730328/)
Book
O'Malley, Therese;
Meyers, Amy R. W.;
(2008)
The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400--1850
(/isis/citation/CBB000830825/)
Book
Fairman, Elisabeth R.;
Art, Yale Center for British;
(2014)
Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World
(/isis/citation/CBB001500458/)
Book
Dunbar, David;
(2010)
British Butterflies: A History in Books
(/isis/citation/CBB001230600/)
Book
Metzler, Sally;
(2007)
Theatres of Nature: Dioramas at the Field Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB000830890/)
Book
Eleanor Jones Harvey;
Hans-Dieter Sues;
(2020)
Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB152797652/)
Be the first to comment!