(b Frankfurt am Main, 2 April 1647; d Amsterdam, 13 Jan 1717). Daughter of (1) Matthäus Merian (i). After her father’s death, her mother married in 1651 the flower still-life painter Jacob Marell, who became Maria Sibylla’s teacher. On 16 May 1665 she married Johann Andreas Graff, another pupil of her stepfather. She thenceforth specialized in illustrations of flowers, fruit and, especially, grubs, flies, gnats and spiders. In 1670 the family moved to Nuremberg. In 1675 Sandrart referred to her in the Teutsche Academie, reporting that she painted on cloth (i.e. silk, satin). With Graff, she produced a book of flowers, the first part appearing in 1675; a second edition, enlarged by parts 2 and 3 ,came out in 1680, entitled Florum fasciculi tres. It included 36 engravings intended to serve as patterns for embroidery. Only five copies of this book have survived, including a single first edition in the Stadt– und Universitätsbibliothek, Berne (others, Dresden, Sächs. Landesbib., and Inst. Dkmlpf.; Mainz, Stadt-& Ubib.; London, V&A). This was followed by Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung (i, Nuremburg, 1679; ii, Frankfurt, 1683), ‘in which, by a new invention, the origins, food and metamorphoses of caterpillars, grubs, butterflies, moths, flies and other such creatures ...are diligently examined, briefly described and painted from life, engraved in copper and published by the author’. The work went into five editions, including those of 1713 and 1714 in Dutch; a third volume was posthumously published (with vols 1 and 2), c. 1718, by her daughter Dorothea. Each of its 50 engravings is minutely rendered by Maria Sibylla from her own observations.

Part of the Merian family

• Merian, Maria Sibilla
  • Merian
  • Nuremberg, §II, 1: Art life and organization: Painting and stained glass
  • works
    • Animal subjects, §2: The 17th century
    • Flower painting, §2(iii): 18th–20th centuries
    • Surinam, §V: Painting, graphic arts and sculpture