Merian, Maria Sibylla definition of Merian, Maria Sibylla in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Merian, Maria Sibylla (märē`ä zĭbü`lä mā`rēän), 1647–1717, Swiss naturalist and painter of insects and flowers; daughter of Matthäus Merian Matthäus Merian, the younger, 1621–87, portrait and historical painter, worked throughout Europe. He is best represented by Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (cathedral, Bamberg) and a portrait of his sister, the artist Maria Sibylla Merian (Basel).
..... Click the link for more information. , the elder. Her first book on insects, with plates she engraved and colored, was published in 1699. The same year she went to Dutch Guiana to study tropical insects, and her work on that subject appeared in 1705. Her remarkable painting of a Guianan bird-eating spider was ridiculed as a flight of female fancy until 1863 when an English naturalist observed a similar spider in the Amazon forest. Merian's careful research in natural history, combined with her exquisite pictorial studies, mostly in watercolor, earned her considerable esteem. The British Museum has two volumes of her drawings.