Hendrik Claudius

He is also regarded as one of the artists contributing to Jacob Breyne's Exoticarum aliarumque minus cognitarum plantarum centuria prima.

Most of what is known about Claudius stems from his 1685 meeting with the visiting French Jesuit missionary, Father Guy Tachard.

After seeing two large volumes of his works, Tachard ventured that Claudius was a competent painter of plants and animals, and that if the books had been for sale he would have purchased them for Louis XIV of France.

Some of his further and rather indiscreet revelations in Voyage de Siam led to Claudius' deportation to Mauritius and Batavia by Simon van der Stel - Tachard wrote "It is from him that we obtained all our knowledge of the country.

This, during a period when the Dutch occupiers of the Cape were extremely suspicious of the French and their designs on the southern tip of Africa.