Heliconia with Insects – 19th-Century Lithograph after Merian’s Plate 54 (1705)

Name: Heliconia with Insects – 19th-Century Lithograph after Merian’s Plate 54 (1705)
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13036
Price: 245 USD
Availability: InStock

$245

€220 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1705
Kind: Birds, Plants & Natural History
Size: 30 × 20 cm (11.8 × 7.9 in)
Condition: Good. Very good condition. Colors are fresh and vibrant, with only minimal toning. No visible tears or creases. The print is presented in a dark green matting board, which enhances the rich reds of the Heliconia and complements the green foliage.
Period: Colonial America
Places: The Guianas
Reference: BG-13036

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

A Heliconia plant with its insects, a color lithograph of the nineteenth century after plate 54 of Maria Sibylla Merian's Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, first published in Amsterdam in 1705. The field year of 1705 refers to the original work; this print is a later copy, and it is shown in a green mat.

The picture shows a single stem of heliconia with its red, claw-shaped bracts rising from a broad green leaf. Around the plant Merian shows the insects that live on it in different stages of life: pale green caterpillars on the bracts, a larva and pupae on the leaf below, and winged adults, among them a fly and a moth, around the stem. Combining the plant with the full life cycle of the insects was the hallmark of her work. Merian (1647 to 1717) was a German-born naturalist and illustrator who traveled to Suriname in 1699 to study its plants and insects, and the plates of her book remain some of the best-known natural history illustrations of the New World.

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