She was the daughter of Matthew Merian, the well-known geographer and engraver, and born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1647. Her father published a topographical work in Germany, in thirty-one folio volumes. Her mother was the daughter of Theodore de Bry, an engraver of repute. A remarkable circumstance, and one contrary to the usual experience of extraordinary persons, was, that Sibylla devoted herself to the vocation of the artist in opposition to her mother’s wishes and in the face of great difficulties. In this respect she differed from most other women artists; for they, as a rule, were led to the study by parental example or domestic training. From the early childhood of this singular girl she manifested a persevering spirit of research in natural history, with a fondness for examining specimens of vegetable and animal life. It is possible that this natural predilection was owing to one of those accidents that so often determine the course and bent of human intellect. Her mother, shortly before her birth, it is said, took a fancy to make a collection of curious stones, mussels, and different sorts of caterpillars. However this may be, it is certain that the child, at a very early age, showed the same taste, and no maternal reproaches or punishment could keep her from indulging the strange fancy. She would, however, conceal her treasures. At last her step-father, the painter Jacob Marrel, having persuaded the mother to consent, arranged it so that the girl took lessons of the famous flower-painter, Abraham Mignon. In the year 1665, at eighteen, she married John Andrew Graf, a painter and designer in architecture. The marriage was not a happy one, but she lived with Graf nearly twenty years in Nuremberg, in a lonely and secluded manner, devoted solely to her art, as she herself says in the preface to one of her published works, giving up intercourse with society, and beguiling her time by the examination of the various species of insects, of which she made drawings, and by the study of their transformations. She painted her specimens first on parchment, and many of those pictures were distributed among amateurs. Encouraged by them, she published, in 1679, a work entitled “The Wonderful Transformations of Caterpillars,” a quarto volume, with copper engravings, executed by herself after her own drawings. Another volume appeared in 1684. The affairs of Graf having become embarrassed, and his conduct being much censured, he was compelled to leave his family and go out of the country. After this separation, Sibylla never assumed her husband’s name in any of her publications, but issued them under her maiden name. About 1684 she went to Frankfort, and prepared for a journey to West Friesland with her mother and daughters. There she became possessed with the religious enthusiasm which had driven so many women into strange doings, and joined the sect of the Labadists, taking up her abode at the Castle Bosch.