Visionaria Botanica: the Exquisite Botanical Illustrations of Maria Sibylla Merian

Poster advertising the Visionaria Botanica exhibit at Baker-Berry Library

Studies of frogs, depicting the life cycle of the amphibian, from an album entitled 'Merian's Drawings of Surinam Insects &c'; with spawn and tadpoles Watercolour and bodycolour, heightened with white (partially oxidised), on vellum

Branch of a defoliated guava tree with tarantulas, ants and spiders

Vitis florens

Handwritten annotations underneath illustrations, and the imprint “Published according to Act of Parliament 1741.”

Woodcut and explanatory verse: entry on Physalis, an edible wild plant. Ru cao bian is a non-medical text, recording 102 species of edible herbs. For each plant entry, there is an illustration accompanied by a verse, with notes on its use as a food.

Silkworm life cycle in the first entry of Merian’s study journal. Several details shown in the final plate are absent from this study. (Source: Kay Etheridge, The Flowering of Ecology - Maria Sibylla Merian’s Caterpillar Book. Koninklijke Brill, 2021.)

Silkworm life cycle

Cyanotype of British algae

George Dollond, the original manufacturer of Sir William Hyde Wollaston’s camera lucida. When an artist looks down through the prism, they see the world in front of them, plus their hand on the page, combined in perfect superimposition.

Illustration of the peacock flower (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) and a moth—shown as larva, pupa, and in adult form—that is likely the tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta).

Iris hortenfis, latifolia

A watercolour of a branch of Pomegranate (Punica granatum) with the Menelaus Blue Morpho butterfly (Morpho menelaus) and the caterpillar of the Banded Sphinx moth (Eumorpha fasciata).

The life cycle of the moth, from an album of 160 drawings entitled 'Merian's Drawings of European Insects &c'; with examples of two caterpillars on a stem of tiny lilac-blue flowers, the stages of four flies below Watercolour and bodycolour, on vellum

Marcelli Malpighii, Opera omnia, seu, Thesaurus locupletissimus botanico-medico-anatomicus :viginti quator tractatus complectens et in duos tomos distributus, quorum tractatum seriem videre est dedicatione absolutâ. 1687.

Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses. With observations and inquiries thereupon / By R. Hooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Johannes Goedart, Naturalis Metamorphosis, 1662. Plate at far right shows moth species with three life history stages. Goedart used etchings instead of woodcuts. (Source: MFA Boston Digital Collection.)

Johannes Goedart, Naturalis Metamorphosis, 1662. Plate at far right shows moth species with three life history stages. Goedart used etchings instead of woodcuts. (Source: MFA Boston Digital Collection.)

Johannes Goedart, Naturalis Metamorphosis, 1662. Plate at far right shows moth species with three life history stages. Goedart used etchings instead of woodcuts. (Source: MFA Boston Digital Collection.)

Recto of German banknote honoring Maria Sibylla Merian

Verso of German banknote honoring Maria Sibylla Merian

The Family of the Engraver Matthäus Merian the Elder

Jacob Houbraken, Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian, circa 1717.

Jacob Marrel, Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian, 1679.

Maria Sibylla Merian, New Flower Book, 1680.