The Girl Who Drew Butterflies
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I spend a lot of time in the car. I think most people in Atlanta can say the same.
To make it more bearable, I have turned to podcast and audio-books. While looking for a new book to listen to I came across “The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science” by Joyce Sidman. Being a female artist who also started out drawing what I saw and had a love for insects and science, I was intrigued. I used my free monthly Audible credit and downloaded the book. And man, am I glad I did.
I had never heard of this artist, granted, you could say that about most female artists. It’s no secret that the art world is HEAVILY male dominated. An issue that is prompting more books recognizing woman artists, such as “Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History” by Bridget Quinn. Which, I am also currently reading. But even still, Maria Merian is not mentioned.
That could be for the fact that Maria was a seventeenth century floral artist.
Oh yea, and one of the first European naturalist to observe insects, specially the nature of metamorphosis in caterpillars, fundamentally changing the science of entomology.
And thank God for that, before Maria’s studies it was thought that butterflies spontaneously manifested themselves or that their eggs came from dew. Keep in mind too, that this was almost 200 years prior to Charles Darwin’s finding in the Galapagos about evolution of species. Maria truly was paving the way of science with recording, drawing and painting her observations of insects.
She gathered and cared for insects at a time when people were being burned at the stake, believed to be witches, for showing too much interest in such things. She traveled to across the sea to South American at the age of 52 with her daughter, recorded insects and animals now thought to be extincted. She published several books with her art of these creatures. She made a living selling art in an era that said women artist couldn’t, apart from their husbands or a male counter part. She left her mark on the world with art, and science in a time when the world tried to assign her a role as a house wife.
