Maria Sibylla Merian

Merian was born into the family of the Swiss engraver and publisher Matthaeus Merian the Elder, who died when she was three.

Merian's stepfather, the still-life painter Jacob Marrel, taught her drawing, watercolour, and engraving, while she began collecting insects and raising silkworms as a girl.

Merian married her stepfather's apprentice Johann Andreas Graff, with whom she had two daughters; the couple later separated.

Living in Nuremberg, Merian published the first part of her Blumenbuch (Book of Flowers), a set of engravings for artists and embroiderers.

Merian's Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung documented the life cycles of moths and butterflies from egg to adult, based on her own observations and paintings.

After leaving her husband, Merian lived with her mother and daughters in a Labadist community in Friesland, where she studied natural history specimens from Suriname.

Merian moved to Amsterdam, where she supported herself by selling paintings and specimens and gained access to the city's collections of tropical natural history.

At the age of 52, Merian sailed with her daughter Dorothea to the Dutch colony of Suriname to study and paint its insects and plants, returning after contracting malaria.

Merian's masterwork on the insects of Suriname, with 60 large engraved plates, established her international reputation as a naturalist.

Merian died in Amsterdam at the age of 69, having suffered a stroke two years earlier that left her partially paralysed.