We're here at the Getty Center.
Looking at a watercolor by
Maria Sibylla Merian, a
remarkable artist, but also
someone who is remarkable for
her scientific discoveries. She
was rather obsessed with
metamorphosis.
She would collect caterpillars
and bring them home and raise
them in boxes. She's raising
children and raising insects at
the same time, all the while
trying to do all the standard
things you do as a mother and a
wife.
As a mother, she's feeding her
children, but she's also feeding
the insects that she's keeping.
She has to go out into the
garden out into the fields
around her and find the exact
plants that the caterpillars
would eat.
You might first notice this
dynamic tree branch dominating
the composition with these
luscious greens. Then around
this, as if it's teeming with
life, you have the male Emperor
moth with its wings spread to
suggest flight.
He's pretty spectacular.
He is spectacular. Purple and
yellow and these black circles,
and below, you see the cocoon.
You see what she referred to as
a date pit. Now we know it as a
pupa. Remember, this is before
there's classification, before
their Latin names for these
insects, before the complete
understanding of the
metamorphosis of insects was
understood. Then you see the
juvenile nymph, and the mature
caterpillar, you see climbing
down that branch and it's this
wonderful green with black bands,
yellow pearls on top, with teeny
black hairs emerging from those
yellow pearls. Notice the
shadows. She's trying to make
this as lifelike as possible.
She's the first to think about
this lifecycle in relationship
to the food source. Others
weren't showing the food source,
and they weren't making it in
this beautiful color. That's
Merian and that comes from the
fact that she was trained as an
artist and her stepfather who
taught her how to paint was a
still life painter.
Unlike previous images and
natural history books, where we
might see moths spread out
perfectly for the purpose of
categorizing different types of
moths or different types of
caterpillars and they might be
separated on different pages of
a book, here, Merian's bringing
everything together into this
natural drama that seems to be
unfolding before our eyes, so
instead of something that seems
like a lifeless specimen, we
have something full of life.
She does away with the static
tradition that she wants to show
something pulsating with life.
She kept a notebook and recorded
all these things and then she
would use that notebook to make
more finished compositions. She
tells us how hard it was to find
this moth, because remember,
moth come out at night, she had
to restructure her whole life
around when these insects were
going to transform.
It was a lot of trial and error,
but every caterpillar that she
documented in her book is one
that she raised through the
entire lifecycle. We're talking
about a moment in history where
this lifecycle was still quite
mysterious.
They still believed that
butterflies or moths
spontaneously generated from
piles of dumb. Not only is she
able to observe it, she's able
to depict it in an artful,
beautiful way. Her whole book
was made for gardeners and for
art lovers. It wasn't made for
the scientific community. What I
love about this images is she
makes us slow down and reminds
us to look.
That was the age she lived in.
Let's not rely on the ancient
knowledge of Aristotle. Let's go
out and observe and document and
relate the beginnings of
scientific observation.
That's a reminder what you're
going to find if you're curious
and what you're going to find if
you don't just read what's in
the books. Remember, she's
growing up in a very religious
time. This was not science the
way we think of science. This
was God's handiwork and she was
trying to understand and make
sense of that handiwork.
This idea of natural theology
that looking at nature would
reveal God's handiwork but also
the idea that we could see
religious ideas in nature. The
transformation of the butterfly
could stand for the idea of the
resurrection. Her approach is
less along those religious lines
and more toward a kind of modern
scientific idea of observation.
Yes, although I do think we have
categories now. We have art here.
We have science here. We have
religion in a whole other sphere.
As a holistic view of nature
with the food source as well as
the whole metamorphosis, it
actually is much like her life.
She was the mother and the
artist. She was the adventurer
and the documentary. She had all
of these things that weren't
contradictions to her.
The idea of the
interconnectedness of things,
and that's what she gives us
here.