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ALBERTUS SEBA'S collection of natural specimens

                                          and its PICTORIAL COLLECTION

IRMGARD  MÜSCH

By becoming an apothecary, Albertus Seba, who was born in 1665 in the East Frisian town of Etzel, chose a profession with close ties to natural history. Unlike today, medications were not synthetically made but mixed together from natural constituents. A whole range of traditional recipes were available to those versed in the art of creating remedies from animal, vegetable and mineral ingredients. But many did not stop there. They continued the search for new methods, collecting natural specimens from distant lands, studying them, and testing their potential uses. Their passion for collecting and researching often extended beyond immediate pharmaceutical applications. In many instances apothecaries started major natural history collections and contributed personally to the growing knowledge of nature.

With his "Die Deutsche Apotheke" (German Apothecary's Shop), as he called his business, Seba rapidly earned an excellent reputation for himself. Financially, too, he was successful - something which would enable him to establish his comprehensive collection of natural specimens. Not relying solely on casual customers who happened to pass by his apothecary, Seba actively sought them out. He traded in drugs from overseas, advertising his prices in an Amsterdam newspaper. He supplied departing ships with cases of medicines and treated their crews. It is related how, whenever a ship arrived in port, Seba would hasten down to the harbour without delay and administer his medicines to the exhausted sailors. Any natural specimens that they had brought with them he would then be able to purchase at a good price or accept in exchange for his medications.

In Amsterdam, Seba was ideally situated for starting such a collection of natural curios and he succeeded in assembling a wealth of natural specimens whose fame spread beyond the bounds of Amsterdam.

ALBERTUS SEBA'S THESAURUS

On 30th October 1731 a contract was signed in Amsterdam between three parties: Seba and the agents of two publishing houses agreed to produce a major work Of 400 plates depicting Seba's collection. Ultimately, the Thesaurus incorporated a magnificent 446 plates, 175 of them doublepage. The four volumes appeared over a span Of 30 years, from 1734-1765. The commentary on the plates was published in a Latin-French and a Latin-Dutch edition, so as to reach a broad international readershio of natural historians. collectors and book lovers. Seba wrote the text for the first two volumes largely himself but also had other naturalists assist him. Volume 1of Thesaurus opens with a few pages devoted to illustrations of the plant skeletons that Seba had prepared and conserved using his own special technique. These are followed by depictions of plants and animals from South America and Asia. Alongside lizards, birds, frogs, spiders and other creatures, Seba includes a few fantastical creatures, such as dragons. Volume 11 is dedicated primarily to snakes, but a few plants and other animals are also depicted on the plates for decorative purposes and in order to illustrate the reptiles' environment. Volume III is devoted to marine life. The imposing variety of sea creatures includes scallops, starfish, squid, sea urchins and fish. Volume IV presents, in nearly 100 plates, a large collection of insects followed by a few pages of minerals and fossils from Seba's cabinet.

Publication of a work like the Thesaurus called for considerable sums of money. Hugely expensive to produce were above all the many illustration plates, whose engraving was a laborious and drawn-out task. The names of no less than 13 artists are recorded as being employed on the transferral of the drawings, frontispiece, and portrait to the copperplates. The expensive work was initially published in black-and-white. It is not known whether the publishers also offered a hand-painted edition, which would naturally have raised the price and profit margin considerably. Buyers probably had the work painted at their own extra expense by specialist colourists.The gorgeous colours add substantially to the attractiveness of the plates, but their purpose was not just aesthetic enhancement. They had a scientific use as well. Some specimens, such as those of butterflies, snakes and shellfish, are only distinguishable by their colouring, and the differences in patterning of many fauna can barely be discerned in black-and-white. Whether or not originally in colour, whether or not based on existing illustrations, the Thesaurus remains an impressive example of a Baroque book. The illustrations in the second, third and fourth volumes, which rely much less on previously published sources, increasingly follow contemporary conventions in scientific literature. For best possible visual clarity, the animals are portrayed without any overlapping and with their size ratios correct - albeit in mirror image, which in the case of snail shells spiralling counter-clockwise became the source of some confusion. What was retained, though, was an ornamental arrangement of the objects on the plates, which is demonstrated by the symmetrically arranged snake plates as well as by artistically arranged shells and insects. Just as with the collection, there were thus always two aspects to the illustrations: they served both scientific instruction and aesthetic appreciation.The Thesaurus treated an important collection of natural specimens of the early 18th century. As a book, the actual stationary collection became mobile and permanently accessible to many interested persons - even when the collection itself had long been scattered to the four winds.This publication presents a representative selection of the most beautiful butterflies and insects from the fourth volume of the complete edition.

 

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