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A901 - Curiosity Cabinet
Cabinets of natural curiosities were the precursors to modern natural
history museums. They were essentially collections, displayed in
cabinets, of interesting specimens found in nature, including
everything from insects to seashells, to plants to fossils, to
monstrosities – two-headed animals and the like. They began around
1500 in the courts of Italian princes, but by the following century
they were flourishing – and not just in the courts of nobility.
Albertus Seba (1665-1736), a Dutch apothecary,
had one of the most extensive collections of natural curiosities in
Europe. He sold his first cabinet of curiosities to Russian czar,
Peter the Great, who used it to start the Russian Natural History
Museum. Items from his later cabinets can be found in the Zoological
Museum in Amsterdam, the British Museum in London and the Natural
History Museum in Stockholm.
Throughout his life, Seba commissioned artists to draw
all the specimens in his cabinets as they would have appeared in life.
He had them engraved and published them as a set of folios. This
poster was created from those folios. It's a great tribute to the
beginning of natural history museums of today. |
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