Strokes of life

When Maria Sibylla Merian stepped down on the shores of Suriname, a Dutch colony in South America in the 17th century, she was transported to a whole new world. It was September 1699. The 52-year-old German naturalist and her daughter had just taken a perilous two-month voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Amsterdam. Merian had long dreamed of making this journey to see creatures she had only observed as fossils and specimens.

Born in Frankfurt in 1647, Merian developed an early fascination for insects. At 13, she began raising caterpillars at home in wooden boxes, feeding them lettuce leaves and watching them transform into moths or butterflies. She also learned to paint in her artist stepfather's workshop and would later marry one of his apprentices.

During her lifetime, Merian published many detailed illustrations, including a two-part series on the metamorphosis of caterpillars, depicted as engravings on copper plates. In those days, people believed that insects were "beasts of the devil" born spontaneously from mud or rotten meat. Merian was among the first to disprove this theory by portraying the insects' complete life cycle. 

Unhappy with her marriage, Merian moved with her daughters briefly to a religious commune, after which her husband divorced her. Later, she moved to Amsterdam, where she first chanced upon insect and animal specimens brought in by Dutch traders from Suriname. She wondered about the creatures' lives and yearned to see them in their natural habitat. After selling her paintings to finance her journey, she set sail with one of her daughters. In Suriname, she braved heat and mosquitoes and took the help of indigenous enslaved people to slash through thickets, ride on riverboats into the rainforest, and collect and observe various kinds of insects and small creatures.

In addition to drawings, Merian made vivid observations. She described, for example, how an ant species could eat "whole trees bare as a broom handle in a single night" (bit.ly/Maria-Merian). She noted the local names of plants and insects, and how the indigenous people used them. Her drawings depicted numerous natural phenomena — from female toads carrying fertilised eggs on their backs to cocoa plants growing in the shade of banana leaves. She also highlighted the relationships between these creatures and their surrounding environment.

Merian planned to stay in Suriname for five years, but illness forced her to return in two. She took back with her a tidy collection (bit.ly/Merian-Specimens) of dried plants and insects, and animal specimens (plus a crocodile preserved in alcohol). In 1705, she published her magnum opus, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, a compendium of 60 beautifully engraved copper plates depicting the lives of Surinamese insects along with plants and animals in their natural habitat. Naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus later used her work to identify dozens of new plant and animal species.

Merian died of a stroke in 1717. Russian tsar Peter the Great was among many collectors who bought and preserved her original illustrations.

Ranjini Raghunath is a Bengalurubased science writer and editor.