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Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis

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You may have seen the artwork of Maria Sibylla Merian, as it is a staple for pretty but accurate pictures of butterflies, caterpillars, moths, and flowers, and can be found on china or stationery. She was more than a painter or engraver, though. Her life was unique. She had artistic talent, but she was also a keen scientific observer, who advanced the study of insects immeasurably. She was a teenaged bride who left her husband who divorced her, and she had to care for their two children. She was so enthralled with the study of moths and butterflies that at age 52 she traveled to a mysterious and largely unknown land to see more of them, and to bring back pictures and scientific descriptions of their behavior. And she did this more than three centuries ago. _Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis_ (Harcourt) by Kim Todd is a thoughtful examination of what we can know about Merian's life from the few personal documents that remain about her, and a proper reevaluation of her place in the world's scientific effort. It also is a fine resource about the biological controversies that were brewing in the seventeenth century, controversies that had to be settled in order for a basic understanding of insect life to take hold.

Merian was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1647. She could not have a formal apprenticeship like a male artist in training, and she could not even paint in oils, because the rules of the guild forbade women from doing so. She was, however, able to use watercolors and engraving with beauty and utility to bring her objects of study almost to life upon the page. When Merian studied or painted insects, she included what foods they ate, and how they proceeded from egg to larva to pupa and to the adult, and it was all part of her contribution to science and to the branch that later was to be known as ecology. In doing so, she was working against scientific currents of the time, since it was held that insects could spontaneously generate from rotting meat, dew, or wool. She also was taking a risk in showing interest in possibly satanic insects, especially since she kept them alive, fed them, and kept their cocoons in her kitchen. Women were accused of witchcraft for less. Dutch curiosity cabinets did contain spectacular specimens from the colony of Surinam, but Merian wanted to see the insects as they lived, and used the money she made from her books and her paintings to finance her two-year trip there. She relied on the natives to tell her about the plants and their uses, and she got the first rudimentary understandings of the rainforest as a complex ecosystem; she observed, for instance, that butterflies at the tops of the trees were different from the ones nearer the ground.

Merian left Surinam after only two years because of illness, probably malaria. After she returned to the Netherlands, she published _Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium_ in 1705, full of pictures and descriptions of the colorful insects she had seen on her travel. The beauty of the pictures was praised, but only succeeding generations could appreciate the ecological innovations of her insect portraits. Her reputation suffered after her death; if she were discussed at all, it was to ridicule her picture of a spider capturing a hummingbird. After all, she had no formal education, she accepted the reports of natives who lived among the insects she depicted, and she was a woman. It was only in the twentieth century that her reputation was restored, not just as an artist but as a scientist who insisted on direct observation of the insects she described, and who realized how their cycles linked within a larger natural system. Todd's book has to have a great deal of speculation in it; she includes many sentences beginning with "perhaps" or "probably". This is because the sources are scant. There are Merian's books and paintings, of course, but beyond that are a couple of her legal documents and less than twenty letters she wrote. Nonetheless, Merian's contributions to biology were considerable, and Todd's well-illustrated and thoughtful book helps in the restoration of her reputation.

Ever since "Tinkering with Eden," I have been eagerly awaiting Kim Todd's next book, and, with "Chrysalis," she does not disappoint. Anyone who enjoys a good biography should read this book - and for that reason, it's a great book to give as a gift. The topic sounds obscure, but Todd's vivid prose brings her remarkable subject to life. Highly recommended!

Maria Sibylla Merian was one of the first naturalists to approach collection and illustration from an ecological point of view--though that term wouldn't be used until 150 years after her death ("oecology" in Ernst Haeckel's Generelle Morphology; see the documentary DVD Proteus for more on Haeckel). She understood that a butterfly or caterpillar removed from nature and placed in a curiosity cabinet is merely one stage of a much more complicated life story. Chrysalis is thus well worth consideration, even if your interest in natural history is minimal.

Kim Todd's biography is a good one, despite an unfortunate lack of source material documenting Merian's inner life. Todd is judicious with her speculations. Her conclusions about Merian's thoughts/feelings are reasonable, if occasionally florid. But considering the subject matter, a little floridity is hardly a flaw.

As the subtitle "... and the Secrets of Metamorphosis" would suggest, the reader is also given a broader view of the milieu in which Merian was working and the contemporaneous theories about spontaneous generation and parasitic behavior in insects.

The book also offers depictions of some of the unusual characters traveling in the scientific and religious circles of the time:

* Frederik Ruysch, a surgeon and obstetrician who created moralistic montages of fetal skeletons holding objects such as a handkerchief made of lung or a violin bow made of artery, accompanied by captions like "Why should I long for the things of this world?"

* James Petiver, an apothecary and fellow of the Royal Society, a buyer of damaged insects, and a man described by a student as "wretched both in looks and actions."

* Antoinette Bourignon, a misandrist who believed that three-fourths of men conspired with the devil; she refused to read the Bible, yet received visitations from God and St. Augustine.

I wish Chrysalis contained more illustrations of Merian's work, but those are readily available in other books. If you'd like to know more about some of the naturalists mentioned by Todd (Henry Walter Bates, Charles Waterton, etc.), check out Bright Paradise by Peter Raby or The Naturalists by Alan Jenkins. Raby's book contains a chapter on the female scientific travelers Mary Kingsley and Marianne North.

What possesses a European woman to pack up her life and move across the ocean to study the natural world? Did I mention that it was 1699?

Chrysalis tells the story of Maria Sibylla Merian, a woman living in the late 1600s and early 1700s, who is fascinated by the process in which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. She cultivates them as one might cultivate roses. More, she studies them in their own habitat. But how did she do it in a time when women were subject to their men, when witch trials were the norm, and dabbling in insect life was more than suspect?

But Chrysalis is more than a biography. It is a study in entomology. What is the process from caterpillar to butterfly? And why do the chrysalises sometimes produce flies rather than butterflies? Remember this is the time of "spontaneous generation" when scientists thought frogs came from rain and meat produced flies.

Chrysalis is more than entomology. It is religious history. What made the Pietist sects split off from the Lutheran church? What was the call of the Labidists for Merian? And how did she slide by the rules of stripping off worldly trappings in order to continue to paint and study?

And still that is not all. There is her study across the ocean in Surinam. Her return. Her art. The study of microbiology with the invention of the microscope. This book is a comprehensive study of much that was going on in the world. It is fascinating and the art is beautiful. If I have any complaint, it is that the author references pieces that aren't pictured in the book and when the pieces are pictured, there is nothing to note that. I spent a lot of time flipping to the grouped photos in an often fruitless search.

Armchair Interviews says: This is an overall fascinating book that could be improved by better referencing and picturing of the art.

Today Maria Merian is mostly known for her lovely butterfly prints, but back in 1699 she sailed from Amsterdam to South America on an expedition to study metamorphosis - a rare journey for any naturalist of the times, much less a woman over fifty - and spent two years in the tropical jungle seeking out caterpillars and studying butterflies. Her accomplishments were largely dismissed and forgotten but come to life here in a gorgeous biography surveying her life and achievements.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

[...]

Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, a nonfiction book by Missoula writer Kim Todd, sounds like a Victorian adventure novel: a fifty-two-year-old woman abandons her husband and European continent to study the metamorphosis of caterpillars in Surinam. But this was before the Victorians. In 1699, more than a century before Darwin, sixty-five years after Galileo's prosecution, and a time when witch hunts were part of the recent past, Maria Sibylla Merian embarked on a journey of scientific discovery in the dangerous New World with only her daughter for company. While the male colonists grew sugar cane on their plantations, Merian's slaves and servants helped her locate insects, reptiles, and plants for her to study and depict in her captivating watercolors. She trusted the natives' knowledge to assist her research, something that would be used against her reputation in the decades after her death.

By the time Merian stepped on that boat to Surinam, she was a mother of two, had published two books about the metamorphosis of caterpillars in her native Germany, and spent five years living with a Pietist religious sect in a castle in Amsterdam, where she argued successfully for a separation from her husband using the sect's beliefs. At the time, a woman's husband was her legal representative and the court ordered numerous women to return to their abusive husbands. But after Merian's successful separation, she lived in Amsterdam and financially supported herself and her youngest daughter. Watercolors were her tool because "guild rules banned women from painting with oils." To get on that boat and to fund her scientific and artistic expedition, Merian sold her paintings and any unnecessary belongings.

Kim Todd who received the PEN/Jerard Fund Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing for her previous book, Tinkering with Eden, vividly describes the cultural, religious, and political time Merian lived in, as well as her artwork and scientific contributions, without overwhelming the reader. Todd also introduces other fascinating, accomplished women of the seventeenth century, and the new, exciting time of natural philosophers (the term scientist hadn't been created yet, neither had biology, ecology, or any of the other -ologies). Spontaneous generation, the idea that creatures could be born from non-living sources, was a common belief during Merian's time. Todd includes some of the recipes. My favorite is:

To get a bee -
Find a sunny space roofed with tile
Beat a three year old bull to death
Put poplar and willow branches under the body
Cover it with thyme and serpellium
The bees will emerge

In language as colorful as Merian's paintings, Todd also describes the intricacies of metamorphosis and some of the insects that befuddled Merian and other natural philosophers. Through Todd's gripping prose, I became excited about the tricky metamorphosis of the large blue butterfly (Maculinea arion). Trust me, that's an accomplishment. If you don't believe insects and metamorphosis are interesting, you will feel differently after this book. To experience Merian's life and what happened to her work and reputation after her death, you will need, and want, to read Chrysalis. One hint: Peter the Great is involved.

I have been familiar with Maria Sibylla Merian for quite a few years now...I just did not know that I was.

What a fascinating life...what a fascinating woman Maria was and I am so very glad the author, Kim Todd took the time to do such a wonderful job of chronicling the life of such a remarkable woman. The task here must have been rather daunting on so very many levels; digging through the mist of time with little left to go on, following leads here, running into dead ends there...quite a remarkable job of research and writing by any standards.

Maria Sibylla Merian was an artist, born 1647 in the City of Frankfurt, Germany. But she was much more than an artist; an illustrator of the natural history around her. She was one of the first to truly investigate the wondrous phenomenon of metamorphosis. She was one of the first to recognized the importance of studying insect in their environments and to examine each stage of their life cycle. She spent her life in the study of caterpillars, butterflies and moths! Many of her illustrations number among the best in the world; both the world of then and now. I would dare to state that most of the readers of this review have seen her work on cards, cups, stationary, reproduced decorator prints...they just did not know who the woman was behind those fantastic works of art. Many of her observations and conclusions, considering the primitive state of science at the time, have proven to be quite accurate. She was literally a couple of centuries ahead of the rest of the world.

Her work had a direct influence on quite a number of scientists of that age and in years to come, Hooker, Darwin, Linnaeus are included but the list goes on. She was greatly respected and one of her number one fans was in fact Peter the Great of Russia which as the reader will find, is extremely important and will find that we all owe the Great Russian a lot as it turns out.

Maria was a very religious and devout woman but she did leave her husband, taking their two daughters with here and join a rather austere religious cult. She published books at a very young age, was a best selling artist, expert engraver, very astute business woman and most certainly knew her own mind. At the ripe old age (and indeed, that was rather pretty old in that day and time), she sold a bunch of her paintings, took her youngest daughter and pulled up stakes in Amsterdam and headed to South America where she spent several years studying and painting the insect life on that continent. The living conditions there were deportable and she suffered from sickness, lack of food...actually, a lack of just about everything. Single women just did not do stuff like this at that time.

Now I am not going to great details in this review... pontification is really not needed here, you absolutely need to read this work for yourself, but please keep in mind the following as you consider this woman's life:

She was born at the tag end of the Thirty Years War. Europe had just experienced and suffered over three decades of Christians slaughtering each other by the tens of thousands. Disease and famine were common, communities had broken down...civilization was on the brink.

Maria was born and did her work during a time when women had almost no rights what so ever. They were considered inferior creatures in just about any way you can imagine. They could not conduct there own affairs, they were not educated, they were under the complete control of either a father, brother or husband and most of them found early graves through either over work or child birth. Truth be told, women were not considered all that bright or strong.

Maria was born and did her work during a time when the good Lutheran peoples of Germany were having a grand old time burning witches like cordwood. Thousands of men and women (women for the most part), were tortured, tried, condemned, and burned if there were the slightest suspicion that they were cavorting with the devil or had any dealings with "evil things." A lady at that time who appeared to be fascinated with "bugs" was certainly in great danger.

Maria had very, very little formal education. Due to the strong control of the various guilds in Germany at the time, women simply were not allowed to make a living through their art work...or any other type of work for that matter. If they were not working under the umbrella of a father or husband, they simply could not earn a living at any of the trades, arts or crafts available at that time.

Science during this time period was just developing and emerging. The concept of spontaneous generation (insects and animals being born directly from the earth or other substances) was an accepted fact; a fact accepted by most of the leading scientists of the day. The church still had a strange hold on all science and would continue to have for quite a number of years. Anyone who contradicted church doctrine or dogma was in grave danger.

The author has done a wonderful job here of putting her subject in her proper time and place. Todd had covered an amazing amount of ground in this biography; history of science, history of many of the great scientists and painters of the day, the life of common folk, religion, the odious and cruel practice of slavery in South American, finance, and social customs. This work is so much more that a simply biography of a single person....it is more like a biography of a not so distant past.

After her death, Maria Sibylla Merian sort of faded. Her work and her art were more or less mangled by the scientific and artistic establishment of the day. She sort of became lost in the shuffle of history. I strongly suspect, as other reviewers here have noted, that this was some for the simple reason that she was a woman. The "Good Old Boys" of the establishment simply could not stand it. He art work was bastardized time and again to the point that much of it was unrecognizable and many of her findings were declared invalid.

Fortunately for us, not all was or is lost. While a lot of here work was either ruined or scattered here and there, good old Peter the Great came through. In 1976 many of Maria's original water colors, along with her original journals were rediscovered in Leningrad where they had been protected through wars and revolutions. Much of the material has been republished and is available to the public (If you can afford it). Maria has been vindicated both as a scientist well ahead of many of her contemporaries, and as an artist...who had far, far more talent that most during her era...and that is saying a lot.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

With two new books being released this week about Merian (one a bio, the other a collection of her art), many will have their interest piqued to read further about this brilliant, pioneering natural historian/artist. Kim Todd writes well, has mastered her subject, and seamlessly weaves interesting asides about slavery and abolitionism, Darwin and Linnaeus, birds of paradise and peacock flowers, Peter the Great and the aftermath of the Thirty Years War, and more into one of those fascinating works that compel you to scour the bibliography and notes for more to delve into. How Merian is left out of most, if not all, general history books is baffling (sexism, misogyny, and the old-boy-network yet again)? A fascinating life story, and Kim Todd's considerable gift with prose narrative make this a book that even those with no prior interest in the subjects of metamorphosis or 16th/17th century exploration will enjoy. It has made me want to read more about the early years of natural history, pre-Darwin.(Todd's earlier book, TINKERING WITH EDEN, is also excellent).

Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd. Orlando, FL, Harvest Book, 2007 330 pp. ISBN: 978-0-15-603299-5

This is an unsung book found in the seconds rack where it never belonged. My own minor financial advantage notwithstanding, the book deserves a more rightful place in the science section of the big block stores. Todd presents a biography, evolutionary adaptation theory and some social history in one book. She does it pretty well too; the prose is lyrical and fluid and maintains the interest of the reader throughout.

Her subject named in the title was a worthy subject for several reasons. She lived during the 17th century and endured the sex role distinctions of the day to be quite a pioneer. An artist turned natural historian, Merian observed the metamorphism primarily of butterflies and moths but also examined other species. She found herself with her daughter in the Amazon studying the flora and fauna of that region at the cusp of the 18th century. She was unaccompanied by any husband or brother. This was very rare indeed.

Merian's artwork itself is exquisite and while she rarely ventured her own suppositions about the details of how metamorphosing worked, she was well read in the literature from places such as the Royal Society. Her status as a woman and an uneducated one at that rendered her work of little importance to her scientific peers though many used her artwork for examples.

Many of her works exist today but she is little known in the field of natural history and Todd deserves kudus for writing about them. To tell us the story of Maria Merian Todd had to verse us in the history of science, evolutionary thinking and some details of how metamorphosis works. These selections of topics are among my favorite and it made this read all the more enjoyable. I was not ready to put it down when it ended. My largest criticism is that it was not about 200 pages longer.