Kinukawa, Tomomi (Author)
This dissertation expands our understanding of the culture of natural history in early modern Europe through a case study of the German artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. By following Merian in Germany, the Dutch Republic, its colony of Surinam, and back, this study reclaims the significance of burgher culture for nature studies. Using unpublished correspondence in four languages, it explores the relations between artists, publishers, and the enthusiastic collectors of naturalia ("liefhebbers"), and analyzes the place of collecting and art in the home in relation to gender. I first examine Merian's contribution to a new pietist genre on insect metamorphosis, which stimulated artists and ordinary burghers, men and women, to observe insects, contemplate nature, and engage with causal questions. Drawing on the culture of collection and gardening, her access to publishing, her training in art, and the legitimacy of pastimes at home, Merian tied her insect studies to her burgher and gender identities in the new culture of consumption and vernacular learning. I analyze how Merian's views on nature's creative power changed as she moved from Germany to Amsterdam and Surinam, and confronted the spontaneous generation controversy. I then explore Merian's attempt to find a place in the learned world, placing her in the world of Amsterdam "entrepreneur naturalists." I show how one Mennonite silk cloth merchant used his famous exotic collection to pay tribute to divine omnipotence, establish his position in the world of learning, and also display the power of the burgher and of the Dutch Republic. Furthermore, I analyze the gendered nature of such collections and argue that they made the boundaries of the learned community more dynamic and contested than they appear. Finally I examine the strategies that Merian and others used to address the problem of making profits from specimens in a learned world that valued disinterestedness. Here Merian's creation of different images of the "curious" investigator proved crucial for her entry (and that of her "wonderful" book on Surinam insects) into the world of learning.
...MoreDescription This work “explores the relations between artists, publishers, and the enthusiastic collectors of naturalia (“liefhebbers”), and analyzes the place of collecting and art in the home in relation to gender.“ (from the abstract) Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 62 (2002): 2544. UMI order no. 3020625.
Article
Kinukawa, T.;
(2011)
Natural History as Entrepreneurship: Maria Sibylla Merian's Correspondence with J. G. Volkamer II and James Petiver
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Book
Attenborough, David;
Owens, Susan;
Clayton, Martin;
Alexandratos, Rea;
(2007)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery
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Brunella Torresin;
(2022)
Nel gran teatro della natura. Maria Sibylla Merian donna d’arte e di scienza (1647-1717)
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Article
Etheridge, Kay;
(2011)
Maria Sibylla Merian and the Metamorphosis of Natural History
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Chapter
Etheridge, Kay;
(2011)
Maria Sibylla Merian: The First Ecologist?
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Thesis
Pick, Cecilia Mary;
(2004)
Rhetoric of the Author Presentation: The Case of Maria Sibylla Merian
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Dominik Hünniger;
(2021)
Visible Labour? Productive Forces and Imaginaries of Participation in European Insect Studies, ca. 1680–1810
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Book
Fairman, Elisabeth R.;
Art, Yale Center for British;
(2014)
Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World
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Article
Kinukawa, Tomomi;
(2013)
Learned vs. Commercial? The Commodification of Nature in Early Modern Natural History Specimen Exchanges in England, Germany, and the Netherlands
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Book
Kay Etheridge;
(2020)
The Flowering of Ecology: Maria Sibylla Merian’s Caterpillar Book
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Book
O'Malley, Therese;
Meyers, Amy R. W.;
(2008)
The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400--1850
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Chapter
Kay Etheridge;
F. J. M. Pieters;
(2015)
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717): Pioneering Naturalist, Artist, and Inspiration for Catesby
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Book
Bert Van De Roemer;
Florence Pieters;
Hans Mulder;
Kay Etheridge;
Marieke Van Delft;
(2022)
Maria Sibylla Merian
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Emma Gleadhill;
(2021)
“For I Asked Him Men's Questions”: Late Eighteenth-Century British Women Tourists’ Contributions to Scientific Inquiry
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Book
Laird, Mark;
Weisberg-Roberts, Alicia;
(2009)
Mrs. Delany and Her Circle
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Article
Richards, Annette;
(2013)
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Portraits, and the Physiognomy of Music History
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Article
Felfe, R.;
(2008)
The Art Cabinet and Its Current Significance. Museum Establishment of Natural History in Early Modern Times
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Chapter
Leonhard, Karin;
(2007)
Shell Collecting: On 17th-Century Conchology, Curiosity Cabinets and Still Life Painting
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Article
Victoria Dickenson;
Jennifer Garland;
(2021)
Taylor White's ‘paper museum’
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Book
Principe, Lawrence M.;
(2007)
Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry
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