Simia Spinx Linn. [Mandrill]

Artist:

Jacques Eustache de Seve (fl 1742-1788)

French artist and illustrator commissioned by Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon to provide the illustrations for Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. Buffon was one of the first to recognise that all living organisms were fundamentally similar, whether they were plant or animal & that life itself was a physical characteristic of matter and not a metaphysical property. He also made a number of illustrations for Johann von Screber’s great zoological series, Die Säugethiere…