Maria Sibylla Merian artist - naturalist

Magazine Antiques, August, 2000 by Charlotte Jacob-Hanson

In 1997 the German artist-naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (Fig. 1) was honored in her native city Frankfurt am Main, with a much acclaimed exhibition at the Historisches Museum in celebration of her 350th birthday. The catalogue of this comprehensive survey of her life and work was published in English the next year adding greatly to current scholarship on Merian. [1] The present article will provide a summary of her fascinating life and briefly explore a lesser known aspect of her artistic legacy--the use of so-called Merian decoration on faience and porcelain beginning in the mid-eighteenth century.

By her own choice, Maria Sibylla Merian left no record of her private life. Her name is not generally encountered in the United States outside the context of natural science, and there are understandably fewer of her published works and watercolors in public or private collections in this country than in Europe. [2] Although she was widely admired in the eighteenth century for her contributions to art, natural science, and exploration, she fell out of favor with certain nineteenth-century English natural scientists who openly scorned her methods and belittled her discoveries. [3] It was the feminist movement nearly a century later that broadened Merian's appeal by exhibiting her paintings with those of other neglected female artists. [4]

Maria Sibylla Merian was born into a prominent Frankfurt family of publishers and artists. Her father, Matth[ddot{a}]us Merian the Elder (1593-1650), a native of Basel, had learned his trade as an engraver and painter in Switzerland, France, and Germany. In 1617 he married Maria Magdalena, the daughter of Johann Theodor de Bry (1561-1623), a renowned artist, engraver, and printer, whose Frankfurt publishing house Merian inherited seven years later. Two of his sons eventually joined their father as draftsmen, painters, and engravers, expanding the business as conditions allowed. A trade fair catalogue of 1650 lists more than 130 titles published by Matth[ddot{a}]us Merian, including significant works in the fields of history, theology, geography medicine, and natural history. [5]

In 1646, a year after his first wife's death, Matth[ddot{a}]us Merian married Johanna Sibylla Heim. Maria Sibylla, born a year later, would hardly remember her famous father, for he died when she was three. In 1651 her mother-married Jacob Marrel (1614-1681), a German still-life painter and art dealer who had been born in Frankenthal. As a thirteen-year-old he had served an apprenticeship in Frankfurt with the still-life painter Georg Flegel (1566-1638), before traveling to Antwerp and Utrecht to become a pupil of the flower painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1683/84). He returned to Frankfurt as a widower with three young children in 1651 and established a workshop there, taking on two apprentices for instruction in drawing, painting, and engraving. His marriage to Maria Sibylla's mother brought the four-year-old girl a friend and a teacher as well as a stepfather.

Johanna Sibylla Marrel had little understanding in matters of art and concentrated on teaching her only surviving child the expected female accomplishments of cooking, needlework, reading, and writing. However, an anecdote about Maria Sybilla's childhood gives an idea of her quiet resolution, as well as her desire to join the artistic circle around her. She began secretly to teach herself to draw and paint. One night she is said to have climbed the wall into a wealthy count's garden in search of live floral specimens. Unaware of their considerable value, she picked several of his tulips for her models. Soon afterwards she was obliged to confess her deed, but she is supposed to have so impressed the count with her finished artwork that he asked only for the painting as compensation. [6]

Even if this story is not wholly factual, it is clear that at some early point, Maria Sibylla's talents came to be taken seriously Her stepfather personally saw to her instruction in the fundamentals of composition and painting techniques. His own mastery of still life can be seen in the rich floral composition shown in Plate IV. [7] At the time, drawing skills were developed by precise copying from natural history prints, and this exercise provided Maria Sibylla's first introduction to many famous botanical books, including works by the French court painter Nicolas Robert (1614-1685) and Theodor de Bry's Florilegium novum. [8] By the age of eleven, Maria Sibylla could engrave a copperplate.

Between 1659 and 1665 Jacob Marrel spent months at a time away from Frankfurt in order to maintain his art business in Utrecht, but during these times Maria Sibylla continued her practical training, along with Marrel's apprentices Abraham Mignon (1640-1679) and Johann Andreas Graff (1636-1701), [9] and she began to develop another interest. As she wrote nearly half a century later,

From my youth onwards I have been concerned with the study of insects, in which I began with silk-worms in my native city...then the far more beautiful butterflies and moths that developed from caterpillars other than silk-worms, which led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to study their metamorphosis. [10]