Maria Sybilla Merian devoted her life to the study of European insects and their metamorphoses. Having seen the wealth of tropical varieties being brought back to Europe by the Dutch West Indies Company, she decided to visit the Dutch colony of Surinam herself to study and paint the insect life there.

She sailed with her daughter Dorothea on June 1699 from Amsterdam, and remained in Surinam until 1701. Her work, first published in 1705, ‘gave an unprecedented glimpse of the teeming insect life of tropical South America, with gorgeous butterflies flying around luxuriant flowering or fruiting plants and with large many-coloured caterpillars crawling over the leaves.