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Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, by Kim Todd
Download PDF Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, by Kim Todd
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Today, an entomologist in a laboratory can gaze at a butterfly pupa with a microscope so powerful that the swirling cells on the pupa’s skin look like a galaxy. She can activate a single gene or knock it out. What she can’t do is discover how the insect behaves in its natural habitat—which means she doesn’t know what steps to take to preserve it from extinction, nor how any particular gene may interact with the environment. Four hundred years ago, a fifty-year-old Dutch woman set sail on a solo scientific expedition to study insect metamorphosis. She could not have imagined the routine magic that scientists perform today—but her absolute insistence on studying insects in their natural habitats was so far ahead of its time that it is only now coming back into favor. Chrysalis restores Maria Sibylla Merian to her rightful place in the history of science, taking us from golden-age Amsterdam to the Surinam tropics to modern laboratories where Merian’s insights fuel new approaches to both ecology and genetics.
- Sales Rank: #387797 in Books
- Brand: Todd, Kim
- Published on: 2007-12-03
- Released on: 2007-12-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .86" w x 5.31" l, .78 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Metamorphosis has long fascinated humankind, but few people more than Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), who spent her life illustrating this mysterious process in insects. Merian grew up in Germany, married, had two daughters, left her husband to join a Labadist (pietist) community in West Friesland, moved to Amsterdam and, at age 52, traveled to Surinam to search for insects. Beyond that, little is known about this remarkable woman except for a few letters and her beautiful engravings and watercolors, most of them published in her books on insect metamorphosis. Todd (Tinkering with Eden) fleshes out her biography with colorful descriptions of Merian's world and the people she knew, emphasizing that she was as exceptional in her art as in her life. Unlike other naturalists at the time, she depicted insects together with their host plants, an innovation that influenced many later 18th-century students of insect life. Merian fell out of favor in the 19th century, but today, when scientists have come to appreciate the importance of environment to insect development, her star is rising again. Todd's vivid account should do much to further the renewed interest in this unusual woman and her pioneering approach to insect illustration. 8-page color insert not seen by PW. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Few phenomena are as compelling as metamorphosis, and few have dedicated themselves to its study as passionately as Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). Fascinated by the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies as a girl, Merian became a renowned naturalist and artist specializing in insect life. Gifted with an innate "sense of ecology," she depicted insects within their habitats a century ahead of Audubon, who did the same for birds. Todd (Tinkering with Eden, 2001) emulates Merian's richly contextual approach in her vivid descriptions of every facet of her subject's vibrant world as she insightfully chronicles Merian's extraordinary life as the daughter of a prominent Frankfurt publisher, an artist's wife in Nuremberg, a member of an isolated religious community, a renowned scientist and artist in progressive Amsterdam, and the practitioner of pioneering fieldwork in the rain forest of Surinam. In the face of systematic misogyny, Merian made invaluable discoveries in sync with Leeuwenhoek's development of the microscope and Linnaeus' grand classification scheme, yet was soon forgotten. Todd's discerning analysis and deep appreciation resurrect Merian and reclaim her still vital achievements, ensuring that Merian will stand as the resourceful and courageous visionary she truly was. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
PRAISE FOR CHRYSALIS
"Todd's book is a portrait of the metamorphosis of an age, a society, and a woman whose passion to see the world through the metaphor of moths and butterflies would not abate. The illustrations reproduced in this fine biography affirm Merian's vision; the range of Todd's research and the eloquence of her writing give that vision voice."--Maurice Manning, BookForum
"In this spellbinding biography, Todd interweaves the life of Maria Sibylla Merian, a German artist and naturalist who became famous in the seventeenth century for her engravings of caterpillars, with the intellectual and scientific history of metamorphosis."--The New Yorker
Most helpful customer reviews
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
A Forgotten Ecologist Getting Her Due
By Rob Hardy
You may have seen the artwork of Maria Sibylla Merian, as it is a staple for pretty but accurate pictures of butterflies, caterpillars, moths, and flowers, and can be found on china or stationery. She was more than a painter or engraver, though. Her life was unique. She had artistic talent, but she was also a keen scientific observer, who advanced the study of insects immeasurably. She was a teenaged bride who left her husband who divorced her, and she had to care for their two children. She was so enthralled with the study of moths and butterflies that at age 52 she traveled to a mysterious and largely unknown land to see more of them, and to bring back pictures and scientific descriptions of their behavior. And she did this more than three centuries ago. _Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis_ (Harcourt) by Kim Todd is a thoughtful examination of what we can know about Merian's life from the few personal documents that remain about her, and a proper reevaluation of her place in the world's scientific effort. It also is a fine resource about the biological controversies that were brewing in the seventeenth century, controversies that had to be settled in order for a basic understanding of insect life to take hold.
Merian was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1647. She could not have a formal apprenticeship like a male artist in training, and she could not even paint in oils, because the rules of the guild forbade women from doing so. She was, however, able to use watercolors and engraving with beauty and utility to bring her objects of study almost to life upon the page. When Merian studied or painted insects, she included what foods they ate, and how they proceeded from egg to larva to pupa and to the adult, and it was all part of her contribution to science and to the branch that later was to be known as ecology. In doing so, she was working against scientific currents of the time, since it was held that insects could spontaneously generate from rotting meat, dew, or wool. She also was taking a risk in showing interest in possibly satanic insects, especially since she kept them alive, fed them, and kept their cocoons in her kitchen. Women were accused of witchcraft for less. Dutch curiosity cabinets did contain spectacular specimens from the colony of Surinam, but Merian wanted to see the insects as they lived, and used the money she made from her books and her paintings to finance her two-year trip there. She relied on the natives to tell her about the plants and their uses, and she got the first rudimentary understandings of the rainforest as a complex ecosystem; she observed, for instance, that butterflies at the tops of the trees were different from the ones nearer the ground.
Merian left Surinam after only two years because of illness, probably malaria. After she returned to the Netherlands, she published _Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium_ in 1705, full of pictures and descriptions of the colorful insects she had seen on her travel. The beauty of the pictures was praised, but only succeeding generations could appreciate the ecological innovations of her insect portraits. Her reputation suffered after her death; if she were discussed at all, it was to ridicule her picture of a spider capturing a hummingbird. After all, she had no formal education, she accepted the reports of natives who lived among the insects she depicted, and she was a woman. It was only in the twentieth century that her reputation was restored, not just as an artist but as a scientist who insisted on direct observation of the insects she described, and who realized how their cycles linked within a larger natural system. Todd's book has to have a great deal of speculation in it; she includes many sentences beginning with "perhaps" or "probably". This is because the sources are scant. There are Merian's books and paintings, of course, but beyond that are a couple of her legal documents and less than twenty letters she wrote. Nonetheless, Merian's contributions to biology were considerable, and Todd's well-illustrated and thoughtful book helps in the restoration of her reputation.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Wonderfully written. Some nice image inserts
By Angela Boyle
Wonderfully written. Some nice image inserts, but mostly the author explores the time period and how Maria was a fore runner for her time.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating new book
By John Taylor
Ever since "Tinkering with Eden," I have been eagerly awaiting Kim Todd's next book, and, with "Chrysalis," she does not disappoint. Anyone who enjoys a good biography should read this book - and for that reason, it's a great book to give as a gift. The topic sounds obscure, but Todd's vivid prose brings her remarkable subject to life. Highly recommended!
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