Insect prints
Butterflies, beetles and their host plants by Maria Sibylla Merian and Edward Donovan. Every print is a facsimile giclée at the size of the original sheet, limited to 250.
Lepidoptera – Papilio Nigrina – Papilio Clytie
$165
Lepidoptera – Papilio Abeona – Papilio Acantha
$165
Lepidoptera – Papilio Erectheus
$165
Lepidoptera Papilio Chrysippe – Papilio Arctous
$165
Lepidoptera – Papilio Bankia
$165
Lepidoptera – Papilio Nerina – Papilio Prosope
$165
Lepidoptera – Papilio Evagoras
$165
Lepidoptera – Papilio Agricola
$165
Lepidoptera – Sphinx Australasiæ
$165
Lepidoptera – Cossus Nebulosus
$165
Lepidoptera, Cossus Labyrinthicus
$165
Lepidoptera, Papilio Solandra, Papilio Zelima
$165
About insect prints
Maria Sibylla Merian was 52 when she sailed from Amsterdam to Suriname in 1699 with her daughter Dorothea Maria. For two years the two women collected along the Suriname River, bred caterpillars in boxes and painted every stage with the plant it was found on. Her book opens with the pineapple, the fruit she thought the finest in the colony, and goes on through cassava, banana, guava and cotton, each with the insects that live on it. All 72 plates of the 1719 edition are here, from the Harlequin Beetle and the Mantids to the Tarantula & Weaver Ants in a guava tree. What is Merian’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium? tells the story of the book.
Edward Donovan’s insects are smaller sheets from almost a century later, and not only butterflies: The Insects of China and The Insects of India include two lantern flies, Fulgora candelaria and Fulgora pyrorhynchus, each set against a flowering plant of its country.