drawing;
album
- Museum number
- SL,5275.32
- Description
-
Two examples of a yellow and brown butterfly, on a yellow-flowered plant, from an album of 91 drawings entitled 'Merian's Drawings of Surinam Insects &c'; and with caterpillar and chrysalis
Watercolour, heightened with white (oxidised), and with pen and grey ink, on vellum
- Production date
- 1701-1705 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 389 millimetres
-
Width: 272 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Entry from J.Harvey's commentary to the Folio Society facsimile of the Surinam Album (London, 2006):
'Merian recorded that this plant, Cassia occidentalis (Linnaeus), the Styptic weed, grew in her garden in Surinam and that it “was used to lay on all wounds, as it helps to heal them”.
The butterfly, larva and pupa are Opsiphanes cassina merianae (Stichel; family: Nymphalidae, Morphinae). This subspecies is named after Maria Sibylla Merian.'
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1753
- Acquisition notes
- Transferred to P&D 11 March 1885 (see note on fly-leaf of album SL,5275.1-91). Transferred from the Department of Manuscripts.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- SL,5275.32
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: N,01.32
