Chrysalis Quotes

“Ultimately, the intoxication of exploration seemed to draw her further from god rather than closer.”
― Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian And the Secrets of Metamorphosis

“Artists who painted natural curiosities found themselves documenting a world emerging and disappearing at the same time, a brief encounter as species heading for extinction and humans crossed paths.”
― Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian And the Secrets of Metamorphosis

“Collectors wanted pictures of the items they'd gathered, both to form Catalina of the whole and to record individual favorites.”
― Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian And the Secrets of Metamorphosis

“She deliberately cultivated relationships with natural philosophers, publishers, and patrons as well as artists....,contacts who would help her build her business.”
― Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian And the Secrets of Metamorphosis

“Often they were arranged according to the whim of the owner, as scientific classification was still in flux, new systems evolving all the time. Categorising a universe that shifted every time a new ship blew into port proved both necessary and a challenge....some classified shells as "knobbed" versus "wrinkled," "the right lip broad" versus,"parallel lips," or listed insects as "naked wings," "sheathed wings" or "creeping.”
― Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian And the Secrets of Metamorphosis

“But merian, so often able to slide by the rules somehow, held on to her specialised tools: her book of notes, her paints, her expensive vellum--carta non nata, skin from unborn lambs, that held the color like nothing else. She brought her mixing materials and pigments.”
― Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian And the Secrets of Metamorphosis