An excellent example of this the first edition of the third volume of Merian’s ‘De Rupsen Begin’ in its finest form printed contra-éprouve. Volumes one and two were first printed in German in two parts of 50 plates each in 1679 and 1683 respectively. Merian herself translated and updated the text in to Dutch and they were first published in Dutch in 1713-14. The third new part was delayed due to ill health and was finally edited by her daughter Dorothea and published in 1717.

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was the daughter of the noted engraver and publisher Mattheus Merian. He had worked on Theodore de Bry’s ‘Florilegium Novum’, 1612. She grew up in a world in which one of the few pursuits allowed to women was that of floral design in one form or another. Maria however moved away from the more formal still life art of its day to a more natural style where the plant co-existed with surrounding wildlife. She would become as Tomasi states ‘One of the greatest painters in the history of botanical illustration’. As a child she became fascinated by the metamorphoses of caterpillars. So much so that in 1679 she published the first volume of ‘De Rupsen Begin’, or the ‘Wonderful Transformation of Caterpillars’. It contained 50 plates and was followed in 1683 by a second volume. A two year voyage to Surinam commencing in 1699 culminated in the sumptuous ‘Dissertatio de Generatione et Metamorphosibus Surinamensium’ in 1705. Before she went to South America she lived in a Labadist community in West Friesland and in 1702 she announced her intention to publish a third volume of ‘De Rupsen Begin’; ‘of the finds made in Holland and Friesland I plan to publish another part, provided there are people interested in it’.

The work was published uncoloured but in the foreword to the second volume of the ‘De Rupsen Begin’, Maria states that ‘some people, desiring this to be set in colour, I will do my best to please’. This is a clear indication that in order to ensure the accuracy of the colour she along with her daughters later in life would undertake the colouring themselves. A third volume was first published in Dutch in 1717. At the bottom of the first page of the Preface (sig. A2) it suggests that Maria’s daughter Dorothea would have undertaken the colouring. She goes on to ‘apologise for the delay that her mother’s recent decline has caused in the production of the work, and admits that her hands are now freer to take on and finish her mother’s work’ (Tomasi). Some of Maria’s original watercolours for this volume survive today in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. Indeed the Exhibition Catalogue lists plate 35 and 36, the latter illustrated. That for plate 35 is lovingly described as being ‘done between 1705 and 1713, the period following the conclusion of Merian’s intensive work on her ‘Metamorphosis’. Two insect transformations are illustrated here. Perched on the love-in-mist is the caterpillar of an alder moth. The moth itself would hardly be identifiable without the caterpillar. Merian described and drew the caterpillar, the cocoon and the moth in her Studienbuch: ‘These green caterpillars spun themselves into a white, oval egg on June 8th, 1705, and on the 28th of the same month such moths emerged’… Merian placed a two-spotted ladybird with larva and pupa on the plant in the lower segment of the picture. The larva is shown sucking on an aphid.’

The finest form of the work was not only to be coloured by her hand but to be printed contra-éprouve too. This time consuming process involved two stages of printing. The individual sheets from the press were immediately turned around and printed in place of the copper plate on to a further sheet of paper. The faint transfer image recorded on the second sheet would not only provide delicate outlines to colour from but the paper would lack any plate mark as here. As a mirror image they would also match the original drawing. It enabled the finished coloured plates to most closely resemble the original watercolours from which they were derived. Examples such as this are exceedingly rare on the market and fetch remarkable prices. I have included an example of a normal printed plate for comparison.

Dunthorne 205; Landwehr 134; Nissen BBI 1342; Sitwell & Blunt p. 67; Tomasi “Oak Spring Flora” pp. 308, 312 & 316-19; Wettengl (ed.) “Maria Sibylla Merian”, exhibition catalogue 1998, Haarlem, nos. 65, 66, 152.