Maria Sibylla Merian

Google on Tuesday is noting the 366th anniversary of Maria Sibylla Merian's birth with the gift of the Google Doodle. So what makes Merian special? Her work was a marriage of art and science in a time of few female scientists and little documentation of pupal insects. The 17th century artist and naturalist (thus, the search engine's name spelled out with curled flora, fauna and critters), was captured by butterflies and other pupal insects. PHOTOS: Google Doodles of 2013 The daughter of an engraver and publisher and stepdaughter of a botanical painter, she started studying silkworms as a child in her native Frankfurt, Germany.

Google on Tuesday is noting the 366th anniversary of Maria Sibylla Merian's birth with the gift of the Google Doodle. So what makes Merian special? Her work was a marriage of art and science in a time of few female scientists and little documentation of pupal insects. The 17th century artist and naturalist (thus, the search engine's name spelled out with curled flora, fauna and critters), was captured by butterflies and other pupal insects. PHOTOS: Google Doodles of 2013 The daughter of an engraver and publisher and stepdaughter of a botanical painter, she started studying silkworms as a child in her native Frankfurt, Germany.

"The kind of creatures I sought were quite different. [I only wished to study] the generation, reproduction and transformation of the creatures, how one emerges from the other, [and] the nature of their diet. . . . Therefore, I would ask you to be so kind and not to send me any more [dead] creatures, for I have no use for them."

"The kind of creatures I sought were quite different. [I only wished to study] the generation, reproduction and transformation of the creatures, how one emerges from the other, [and] the nature of their diet. . . . Therefore, I would ask you to be so kind and not to send me any more [dead] creatures, for I have no use for them."

GARDENERS know they're never alone. Visitors arrive nonstop, by land and by air. Birds, bees, butterflies, bats, beetles, snails, snakes, lizards, mice, frogs. Maria Sibylla Merian painted them all -- and at a time when no one knew exactly what many of these creatures were, or what to call them. Her 300-year-old illustrations and some actual insect specimens that inspired them are on view in a new exhibition, "Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science," at the Getty Center.

Regarding Lorna Sage's review of Natalie Zemon Davis' "Women on the Margins" (Jan. 7): I assume Sage is not a historian. She seems unfamiliar with Davis' work and with the field in general, even suggesting that Davis "exiles scholarly references to copious endnotes," although endnotes replaced footnotes in history texts more than two decades ago. Davis is more than the author of "The Return of Martin Guerre." She is one of today's foremost historians, and her numerous articles and books--"Society and Culture in Early Modern France" (1975)

'Women on the Margins" is a book in disguise. It looks like an act of pious retrieval, the kind of tradition-making that women's studies took off on a quarter of a century ago, as old-fashioned as the space program. But despite the title, this isn't something we've read before.

GARDENERS know they're never alone. Visitors arrive nonstop, by land and by air. Birds, bees, butterflies, bats, beetles, snails, snakes, lizards, mice, frogs. Maria Sibylla Merian painted them all -- and at a time when no one knew exactly what many of these creatures were, or what to call them. Her 300-year-old illustrations and some actual insect specimens that inspired them are on view in a new exhibition, "Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science," at the Getty Center.