Albertus Seba’s Followers (13)

Albertus Seba

Born

in Friedeburg, Germany

May 12, 1665

Died

May 02, 1736

Genre

Pharmacutical, Zoology, Science

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Albertus Seba was a Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and collector.

Born in East-Frisia, Seba moved to Amsterdam as an apprentice and opened around 1700 a pharmacy near the harbour. Seba asked sailors and ship surgeons to bring exotic plants and animal products he could use for preparing drugs. Seba also started to collect snakes, birds, insects, shells and lizards in his house. From 1711 he delivered drugs to the Russian court in Saint Petersburg and sometimes accepted fresh ginger as payment. Seba promoted his collection with the head-physician to the tsar, Robert Arskine, and early 1716 Peter the Great bought the complete collection. Seven months later seventeen trunks arrived in Russia. With Seba as an intermediate, Frederik Ruysch, a famous Albertus Seba was a Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and collector.

Born in East-Frisia, Seba moved to Amsterdam as an apprentice and opened around 1700 a pharmacy near the harbour. Seba asked sailors and ship surgeons to bring exotic plants and animal products he could use for preparing drugs. Seba also started to collect snakes, birds, insects, shells and lizards in his house. From 1711 he delivered drugs to the Russian court in Saint Petersburg and sometimes accepted fresh ginger as payment. Seba promoted his collection with the head-physician to the tsar, Robert Arskine, and early 1716 Peter the Great bought the complete collection. Seven months later seventeen trunks arrived in Russia. With Seba as an intermediate, Frederik Ruysch, a famous botanist, again sold his collection to the tsar. A special building was designed, and from 1728 till 1830 both collections were exposed in the Kunstkammer. With the acquisition of the two collections, the Russian Academy of Sciences had two modern, very well-documented collections at its disposal.
View of the Kunstkammer across the Neva.

In October 1728 Seba had become a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1735 Linnaeus visited him twice.

In 1734 Seba had published a Thesaurus of animal specimens with beautiful engravings. The full name of the Thesaurus is, with a dual Latin–Dutch title, Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio — Naaukeurige beschryving van het schatryke kabinet der voornaamste seldzaamheden der natuur (Accurate description of the very rich thesaurus of the principal and rarest natural objects). The last two of the four volumes were published after his death (1759 and 1765). Today, the original 446-plate volume is on permanent exhibit at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, Netherlands. Recently, a complete example of the Thesaurus sold for US $460,000 at an auction. In 2001, Taschen Books published a reprint of the Thesaurus, with a second printing in 2006.

In 1752, several years after his death, Seba's second collection went on auction in Amsterdam. The Petersburg Academy hastened to try and buy several objects. ...more

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Average rating: 4.5 · 390 ratings · 30 reviews · 29 distinct works • Similar authors

	Natural Curiosities: From the Cabinet of Albertus Seba 4.43 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 2003 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Butterflies by Albertus Seba, Rainer Willmann, Jes Rust 4.24 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2004 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Shells & Corals 3.56 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 2004 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Seba's Snakes and Lizards: 240 Illustrations 3.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2006 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sea Creatures CD-ROM and Book 3.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2005 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cabinet of Natural Curiosities / Das Naturalienkabinett / Le cabinet des curiosit¨¦s naturelles (English, German and French Edition) by Albertus Seba 25th (twenty-fifth) Edition (4/1/2011) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Butterflies and Moths CD-ROM and Book 2.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2005	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio, et iconibus artificiosissimis expressio, per universam physices historiam: Opus, cui, in ... par exstitit; Volumen 1 by Albertus Seba, Herman Boerhaave, Hieronymus David Gaubius (Creator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cabinet of Natural Curiosities 2019 Cale 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Albertus Seba (?)

“When a collector or naturalist commissioned an artist to draw specimens of interest to him, ... the plant or animal in question underwent considerable abstraction and distillation on its way to becoming a scientific illustration. Just as a specimen was regarded as representative of its species, so its appearance was systematized. Individual traits not typical of its kind were minimized and the scientifically significant ones were accentuated. ... This pictorial abstraction may also be understood as one way of taming the multifariousness of nature.”
― Albertus Seba, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765

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“In a world becoming ever more complex with each new geographic and scientific discovery, the ideal cabinet of curiosities constituted an attempt to produce an overall picture of this world, the cosmos. Within its limited space, the cabinet represented a microcosm, reproducing the general picture, the macrocosm, on a reduced scale. The early cabinets of curiosities thereby spotlighted areas on the fringes of the known world.”
― Albertus Seba, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765

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“The arrangement of various objects in a room -- some laid out on tabletops -- gave the viewer the opportunity to relate individual objects to one another visually and to draw connections between them. A given natural specimen, a piece of coral for instance ... thereby acquired different meanings. ... What today seems the very heterogeneous organization of cabinets of curiosities was grounded in this network of meanings, and arose out of correlations with religion and alchemy as well as out of the classification of objects by their specific material properties.”
― Albertus Seba, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765

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