Merian's Harlequin beetle is both exotically beautiful and vaguely menacing. Like a creature from another planet -- which is precisely how it and its home in Surinam were perceived in late 17th century Europe -- its grasp of an unidentified fruit pod seems both powerful and fragile.

About Maria Sibylla Merian

Merian's paintings reflect the 16th-and 17th-century phenomena of "tulipmania" and of the "cabinets of curiosities", small but encyclopedic collections of all things rare and marvelous.

Merian's innovative and fascinating combination of flowers with insects and sea shells is really a reflection of her primary interest in insects. She left Holland in 1688 where the tulip, a recent arrival from Turkey, had become one of the most valuable commodities of trade. Arriving in Surinam (Dutch Guiana), she created her greatest work, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705).

The butterflies and moths she shows living on and with flowers and fruits were exotic creatures then unknown to Europeans. These delicate and flamboyant images are unique masterpieces of the Art of Discovery.

If you'd like to know a lot more about this most fascinating artist, you might want to buy Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis at Amazon.com