Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717)
Over de Voortteeling en Wonderbaerlyke Veranderingen der Surinaamsche Insecten. Amsterdam: J. Frederic Bernard, 1730. 2° (525 x 347mm). Hand-coloured engraved allegorical frontispiece by F. Ottens, hand-coloured engraved title vignette and 72 hand-coloured plates after Merian by J. Mulder, P. Sluyter and D. Stoopendaal. (Title slightly soiled, occasional light marginal spotting and thumb-soiling.)
[Bound with:]
De Europische Insecten. Amsterdam: J.F. Bernard, 1730. 2° (525 x 347mm). Half-title, title in red and black with hand-coloured engraved vignette, and 184 hand-coloured plates by Merian on 47 sheets. (Two plates bound in upside down, occasional light soiling.) The two works bound in contemporary Dutch crimson morocco, covers with wide gilt dentelle border, floral corner-pieces, and gilt inner panel with motif of scallop shells and caterpillars enclosing a heraldic shield with ground stained black, the shield tooled with an urn containing a long-leaved plant with three rows of stars above, and surmounted by a basket of flowers, gilt spine in nine compartments with black morocco lettering-piece and repeated floral ornament, gilt edges and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers (extremities rubbed).
TWO FINELY-ILLUSTRATED WORKS BY MERIAN, the 1730 Dutch edition of Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, here bound in the customary way with the same publisher's 1730 edition of De Europische Insecten. The latter was first published in Nuremberg as Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung und sonderbare Blumennahrung, in two volumes, 1679-1683, before the artist/naturalist had left her native Germany for Holland. It was her first book, demonstrating the early development of her passionate interest in insects and their transformations. Merian and her daughter, Johanna Helena, arrived in Surinam in September 1699. Despite the high mortality rate, she stayed in Dutch Guyana for nearly two years, making an incessant study of the plants and insects, and recording them in the magnificent Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium which she herself first published in Amsterdam in 1705. The present (second Dutch) edition includes an additional 12 plates by Johanna, and as Landwehr (p. 28) states so em