Maria Sibylla Merian (1614 -1717) stands alone as the only female naturalist-artist and explorer of late seventeenth, early eighteenth-century Europe. Trained as an artist in Germany in the workshop of her stepfather, Jacob Merrell, Merian studied insects and reared silkworms as a child. Fascinated by the exotic insects she saw in the cabinets of collectors in Holland where she later lived, she made a pioneering visit to the Dutch colony of Suriname between 1699 and 1701 together with her daughter, Dorothea. There for two years she studied tropical insect life on its native plants, making sketches and preserving specimens. On her return to Holland, she spent five years working on a magnificent publication on the metamorphosis of insects, her Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705).

Merian’s pioneering travels and work, and the dramatic illustrations she made of insects on their host plants, provided an example to many contemporary and later naturalists and plant lovers, including the first Duchess of Beaufort, whose florilegium will form the last talk of this online Gardens Trust series. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

Henrietta McBurney MVO, FLS, FSA, is an art curator and art historian. She worked as curator in the Print Room of the Royal Library, Windsor, for nearly 20 years. Subsequently she was keeper of fine and decorative art at Eton College, and curator of collections at the Garrick Club and Newnham College, Cambridge; she has since worked free-lance as a curator for Cambridge colleges. She has a particular interest in the intersection of art and science and has recently published Illuminating Natural History. The Art and Science of Mark Catesby (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale, June 2021). Other publications include studies on the 17th-century Florilegium of Alexander Marshal and Birds, Other Animals and Natural Curiosities, the natural history drawings for Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Paper Museum.