Papaya and Insects – 19th-Century Hand-Colored Lithograph after Merian Plate 45

Name: Papaya and Insects – 19th-Century Hand-Coloured Lithograph after Merian Plate 45
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13035
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.

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.
Places: The Guianas
Reference: BG-13035

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 papaya with its insects, a color lithograph of the nineteenth century after a plate from Maria Sibylla Merian's Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, first published in Amsterdam in 1705. The plate is listed as plate 45 of the original work. The print is shown in a green mat.

The picture shows the papaya tree's large palmate leaf spread at the top, a halved fruit below it with yellow flesh and a cluster of black seeds, and a stem hung with pink and white blossoms at the right. Around them Merian places the insects that feed on the plant: caterpillars on the leaf and on the stem, and a small winged insect near the fruit and two moths above, so that the plant and the stages of the insects' life appear on the same sheet. That union of botany and entomology 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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