Illustration week - Sybilla Merian

Sybilla Merian

• Born 1647, Germany 
• Does natural scientific illustrations.
• A descendent of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family, founders of one of Europe's largest publishing houses in the 17th century.
• Merian published her first book of natural illustrations, titled Neues Blumenbuch, in 1675 at age 28.
• She collected and observed live insects and created detailed drawings to illustrate insect metamorphosis.
• Merian wrote: "I spent my time investigating insects. At the beginning, I started with silk worms in my home town of Frankfurt. I realised that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silkworms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars i could find in order to see how they changed." 
• "I created the first classification for all the insects which had chrysalises, the daytime butterflies and the nighttime moths. The second classification is that of the maggots, worms, flies, and bees. I retained the indigenous names of the plants, because they were still in use in America by both the locals and the Indians"             
•                                                                                                                                                           I really like her work, I like the detail that she has got from the things she was drawing i like also that she traveled so that she could document and draw for the joy of it, finding and illustrating the bugs she found.