bavarikon4UDescription
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) wrote to the Nuremberg physician and botanist Johann Georg Volkamer (1662-1744) with whom she had close business and scientific ties. After returning from her dangerous expedition to the tropical rainforests of South America, she provided information on the development of her main work, the "Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium". She described her diverse work as a researcher, starting with collecting caterpillars, breeding them and finally the dissecting of the insects. As a businesswoman, she offered her customer exotic specimens and worried about the difficult funding of her new work, which appeared in large format and was to make her world-famous. Since Merian left no autobiography and no self-portrait, her letters are the most important testimonies of an extraordinary life as researcher and artist at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. Together with this letter Merian sent West Indian insects to Volkamer and offered other exotic specimens, such as a crocodile, snakes, a gecko and a turtle for inspection and as samples. Beyond such matters of business, she sent her regards to the painter Dorothea Maria Auer (1641-1707), who had taken over the sponsorship of her younger daughter in Nuremberg in 1678.
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