Hendrik Claudius

Gomphocarpus cancellatus
Simon van der Stel's journey to Namaqualand 1685

Hendrik Claudius aka Heinrich Claudius (c1655 Breslau - after 1697 Holland) was a German painter and apothecary or physician, noted for his contributions to the Codex Witsenii.

Claudius arrived in the Cape Colony from Batavia in 1682 to paint plants of medicinal interest. He joined Ensign Olof Bergh's second expedition in 1683 to Namaqualand in a quest to locate the source of rich copper ore. It is thought that two years later he also joined Governor Simon van der Stel who had the same goal, and that he was responsible for the illustrations in an account of the expedition. 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, who ventured that he was a competent painter of plants and animals. Some of his further indiscreet revelations in Voyage de Siam led to Claudius' deportation by Simon van der Stel. Tachard wrote "It is from him that we obtained all our knowledge of the country. He gave us a little map made by his own hand." This, during a period when the Dutch occupiers of the Cape were extremely suspicious of the French and their designs on the Cape.