Art competes with nature: Maria Sibylla Merian (1647--1717) and the culture of natural history (Germany).

摘要

This dissertation expands our understanding of the culture of natural history in early modern Europe through a case study of the German artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. By following Merian in Germany, the Dutch Republic, its colony of Surinam, and back, this study reclaims the significance of burgher culture for nature studies. Using unpublished correspondence in four languages, it explores the relations between artists, publishers, and the enthusiastic collectors of naturalia (“liefhebbers”), and analyzes the place of collecting and art in the home in relation to gender.; I first examine Merian's contribution to a new pietist genre on insect metamorphosis, which stimulated artists and ordinary burghers, men and women, to observe insects, contemplate nature, and engage with causal questions. Drawing on the culture of collection and gardening, her access to publishing, her training in art, and the legitimacy of pastimes at home, Merian tied her insect studies to her burgher and gender identities in the new culture of consumption and vernacular learning. I analyze how Merian's views on nature's creative power changed as she moved from Germany to Amsterdam and Surinam, and confronted the spontaneous generation controversy.; I then explore Merian's attempt to find a place in the learned world, placing her in the world of Amsterdam “entrepreneur naturalists.” I show how one Mennonite silk cloth merchant used his famous exotic collection to pay tribute to divine omnipotence, establish his position in the world of learning, and also display the power of the burgher and of the Dutch Republic. Furthermore, I analyze the gendered nature of such collections and argue that they made the boundaries of the learned community more dynamic and contested than they appear.; Finally I examine the strategies that Merian and others used to address the problem of making profits from specimens in a learned world that valued disinterestedness. Here Merian's creation of different images of the “curious” investigator proved crucial for her entry (and that of her “wonderful” book on Surinam insects) into the world of learning.