Albertus Seba

See also: Albertus, Seba

Albertus Seba (May 12th 1665, Etzel, Germany - May 2nd 1736, Amsterdam) is a Zoologiste and a pharmacist Dutch, famous for its Cabinet of curiosities.

Young person, it travels much to the Netherlands and to Germany to learn pharmacy. In 1696, it settles definitively in Amsterdam. Thanks to the marketing activity of this city and its port, it is well placed to obtain specimens coming from the new world and of remote regions.

Thanks to its activity, it acquires a solid fortune, money which it devotes to the Natural history. It sells its first collection with the Tsar Pierre I {{er}} Large the in 1717 (it will constitute the embryo of the future natural history museum of Saint-Pétersbourg) and a news starts again some immediately.

It is interested in the Mammifère S, with the Oiseau X, the Mollusque S, the Insecte S and the Serpent S, its subject favorites.

It makes appear, in 1710 the catalog of its cabinet, the Locupletissimi Rerum Naturalium Thesaurus , qui' it regards as most beautiful of the world. This catalog consists of 446 boards of big size, 175 are double pages, the whole divided into four parts. It uses, to carry out its illustrations of the technique called out of mirror (the drawing is put at back on surface to engrave, then one carries out a kind of décalcage using a point). It is proceeded is fast but with the defect to reverse the direction of rotation of the Coquillage S in the shape of whorl.

The first publication is in black and white but that complicates the determinations of the illustrated species. The boards of some of the posterior editions will be colored with the hand.

The first volume of the Thesaurus appears in 1734 and the second in 1735. Two following volumes will appear a long time after the death of Seba (1736), in 1758 and 1765. But as of this time, the catalog of Seba is criticized by its contemporaries because its system of grading suffers from the comparison with that of Carl von Linné whose first version appears in 1735, one year before the death of Seba. Linné is invited besides to take part in the drafting of the catalog of Seba but it declines this offer.

The Thesaurus of Seba is a splendid publication, at the border between art and science. The animals are illustrated in artistic installations and the shells form decorative reasons. Even if certain illustrations are very artificial (like that of the hydre), they represent a summun in the art of the illustration Naturaliste. They will be often used by other authors after him, in particular Linné. The text, antiquated, is, him, very summary.

The format of the Thesaurus is enormous, it is 51 cm high and each volume weighs approximately 9 kg. Because of size of the 449 boards, the animals are often illustrated in their true sizes.

Its collections are sold in 1752 and are dispersed through the Europe. Thus, the Reptile S which it had find today in the natural history musea of Berlin, Leyde, Saint-Pétersbourg, London and Paris, inter alia.

The German Naturaliste Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1748-1804) will dedicate to him in 1789, the Python of Seba ( Python sebae ) of Africa.

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