Thought For The Day

Science and Religion Dept.

It was one thing to discover new continents or new constellations, and quite another to discover, as Antonie van Leeuwenhoek—the Dutch inventor of the microscope—did with some horror, that whole kingdoms of "animalcules" were carrying on their lives within his own mouth.

A review of an exhibition of the work of Maria Sibylla Merian, another remarkable woman I never heard of until this day.

Correction: Women and Art Dept.

The idea of "minor arts" reflects the continuing commanding influence (thanks in great measure to Bernard Berenson) of the sixteenth-century artist and writer Giorgio Vasari, whose endlessly entertaining Lives of the Artists (with editions in 1550 and 1568) enshrined history painting as the pinnacle of the visual arts and Michelangelo as their undisputed master. In such company, Maria Sibylla Merian's renderings of plants and animals, with their crystalline accuracy, consigned her for a long time to the realm of scientific illustration rather than art.

Correction II: Women and Gardening Dept.
A quibble here: Since when is the path of life "imperfection" and the absence of decay perfection. Since forever, I suppose. Note to self: become Buddist.

Rather than showing animal and vegetable at some celestially perfect moment, she combines the different stages of growth and decay, collapsing an expanse of time into a single image. Her flowers will appear on the same branch as buds, as new blossoms, full-blown, withered, gone to fruit. Leaves sprout, flourish, go brown, die, and drop, many of them half-eaten by caterpillars. The insects, too, are shown as they pass through every stage of their strange cyclical lives. Like Caravaggio before her, she registers the passage of time by documenting several of its phases, calling attention to the immanent imperfection of it all.