This fine plate of the Common Caiman, or Alligator, is one of the more famous images by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). She is most famous for two published works, the ‘Dissertatio de Generatione et Metamorphosibus Insectorum Surinamensium’ first published in 1705 and ‘De Europische Insecten’ of 1730, both published in Amsterdam.

Maria was the daughter of Matthias Merian (1593-1650), a noted engraver and publisher. He had engraved the plates for Theodore de Bry’s ‘Florilegium Novum’, 1612. Her mother was Dutch, and on Merian’s early death she married the flower painter Jacob Marrell. It was one of his pupils, Johann Graff of Nuremberg, who first taught Maria to paint; later they married. She grew up in a world in which one of the few pursuits allowed to women was that of floral design in one form or another.

Maria however moved away from the more formal still life art of its day to a more natural style where the plant co-existed with surrounding wildlife. She would become as Tomasi states ‘One of the greatest painters in the history of botanical illustration’. As a child she became fascinated by the metamorphoses of caterpillars. So much so that in 1679 she published the first volume of ‘De Rupsen Begin’, or the ‘Wonderful Transformation of Caterpillars’. It contained 50 plates and was followed in 1683 by a second volume.

Noting the fascinating insects returning from the Dutch colony in South America, she set sail with her daughter Dorothea in 1699 for Surinam where she remained until 1701. The pair studied and recorded the plants and insects and returned to Amsterdam with several finished drawings on vellum, together with specimens and further sketches. Their work culminated in the sumptuous ‘Dissertatio de Generatione et Metamorphosibus Surinamensium’, published in Latin in 1705.

The ‘Metamorphosis’ is ‘the most magnificent work on insects so far produced … [combining] science and art in unequal proportions, meeting the demands of art at the expense, when necessary, of science. Her portrayals of living insects and other animals were imbued with a charm, a minuteness of observation and an artistic sensibility that had not previously been seen in a natural history book’ (Dance).

The daughter Dorothea returned to Surinam to complete with work which was expanded with 12 further plates and published two years after her mother’s death in 1719. Dance (1989) pp. 50-51; Dunthorne (1938) 205; ‘Great Flower Books’ (1956) p. 67; Hunt (1958) 467; Landwehr (1976) 131; Nissen (1966) 1341; Pritzel 6105; Sitwell & Blunt (1990) p. 67; Tomasi (1997) ‘Oak Spring Flora’ 101; Wettengl (ed.) ‘Maria Sibylla Merian’, Exhibition catalogue (1998), Haarlem, nos. 65, 66, 152.