“I collected all the caterpillars I could find in order to study their metamorphosis.”
-Maria Sibylla Merian: Diary entry age 13
Maria Sibylla Merian was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator who was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1647.
At a time when insects were thought to be “beasts of the devil,” her beautiful and accurate paintings revolutionized the science of entomology.Her painstaking observation skills refuted the prevailing notion at the time that insects spontaneously arose from the mud.
Maria Merian described the life cycles of 186 insect species. Long before the body camera was invented, through her lavish and accurate paintings, she was the first to document life stages of many insects for the public.
The students explored printmaking with bubble wrap and recycled items from home.
