Portrait of a woman called Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717)

In 1679 the first volume of Maria Sibylla Merian's study of caterpillars and their transformations appeared in print, and Europe began to look at insects differently. She was 32 that year. This portrait is said to show her at exactly that moment, though the museum labels the sitter cautiously as the woman only 'called' Merian, since the identification is traditional rather than certain. The painter was Jacob Marrel, a specialist in flower still lifes who had married her widowed mother when Maria was a child and gave her the first lessons in drawing. It was in his workshop, among painted tulips and real caterpillars, that she learned to watch small living things closely. Marrel died two years after finishing this.