Merian, Maria Sybilla (1647-1717).

Dunthorne 205; Great Flower Books, p.119; Hunt 467 (1726 edition); Landwehr 131; Nissen BBI 1341; Oak Spring Flora, 101

the most beautiful work on insects and flowers, in its most desirable state. The counter-proof technique, whereby the image is printed from a freshly pulled print, gives a much softer impression and allows the delicate hand-colouring to appear as close to the original drawing as possible. The rarity of counterproof copies, especially those before letters, indicates that they were reserved only for a few select collectors.

Maria Sibylla Merian was the daughter of the well-known Swiss engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian. On her father’s early death, her Dutch mother married the flower painter Jacob Marrell. It was one of his pupils, Johann Graff of Nuremberg, who first taught Maria to paint, and later they married. Maria was primarily interested in entomology, and her first book, on the insects of Europe, with fine coloured plates of insects and flowers, was published in 1679. Some years later she was shown a collection of tropical insects which had been brought back from Surinam. This inspired her, and together with her daughter Dorothea, she embarked on a remarkably enterprising journey to South America, arriving in September 1699. They stayed for nearly two years studying and recording the plants and insects, the results of their labours being the magnificent Dissertatio… insectorum surinamensium.

Maria died in 1717 before the final twelve plates were published and her daughter Johanna supervised the publication of this enlarged edition.