from
Ferrante Imperato's ''Dell'Historia Naturale'' (Naples 1599), the earliest illustration of a natural history cabinet
To c. 1600 The earliest pictorial record of a natural history cabinet is
the engraving in
Ferrante Imperato's ''Dell'Historia Naturale
(Naples 1599) (illustration''). It serves to authenticate its author's credibility as a source of natural history information, by showing his open bookcases (at the right), in which many volumes are stored lying down and stacked, in the medieval fashion, or with their spines upward, to protect the pages from dust. Some of the volumes doubtless represent his
herbarium. Every surface of the vaulted ceiling is occupied with preserved fishes, stuffed mammals and curious shells, with a stuffed crocodile suspended in the centre. Examples of corals stand on the bookcases. At the left, the room is fitted out like a
studiolo with a range of built-in cabinets whose fronts can be unlocked and let down to reveal intricately fitted nests of pigeonholes forming architectural units, filled with small mineral specimens. Above them, stuffed birds stand against panels inlaid with square polished stone samples, doubtless marbles and jaspers or fitted with pigeonhole compartments for specimens. Below them, a range of cupboards contain specimen boxes and covered jars. in
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence In 1587 Gabriel Kaltemarckt advised
Christian I of Saxony that three types of items were indispensable in forming a "Kunstkammer" or art collection: firstly sculptures and paintings; secondly "curious items from home or abroad"; and thirdly "antlers, horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals". When
Albrecht Dürer visited the
Netherlands in 1521, apart from artworks he sent back to
Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of
coral, some large fish fins and a wooden weapon from the
East Indies. The highly characteristic range of interests represented in
Frans II Francken's painting of 1636 (
illustration, above) shows paintings on the wall that range from landscapes, including a moonlit scene—a genre in itself—to a portrait and a religious picture (the
Adoration of the Magi) intermixed with preserved tropical marine fish and a string of carved beads, most likely
amber, which is both precious and a natural curiosity. Sculptures both classical and secular (the sacrificing
Libera, a Roman fertility goddess) on the one hand and modern and religious (
Christ at the Column) are represented, while on the table are ranged, among the exotic shells (including some tropical ones and a shark's tooth):
portrait miniatures, gem-stones mounted with pearls in a curious quatrefoil box, a set of sepia
chiaroscuro woodcuts or drawings, and a small
still-life painting leaning against a flower-piece, coins and medals—presumably Greek and Roman—and Roman terracotta oil-lamps, a Chinese-style brass lock, curious flasks, and a blue-and-white Ming porcelain bowl. The
Kunstkammer of
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (ruled 1576–1612), housed in the
Hradschin at Prague, was unrivalled north of the Alps; it provided solace and retreat for contemplation that also served to demonstrate his imperial magnificence and power in the symbolic arrangement of their display, ceremoniously presented to visiting diplomats and magnates. Rudolf's uncle,
Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, also had a collection, organized by his
treasurer,
Leopold Heyperger, which put special emphasis on paintings of people with interesting deformities, which remains largely intact as the
Chamber of Art and Curiosities at
Ambras Castle in Austria. "The Kunstkammer was regarded as a
microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction." Of
Charles I of England's collection, Peter Thomas states succinctly, "The
Kunstkabinett itself was a form of propaganda."
17th century ,
The cabinet of a collector with paintings, shells, coins, fossils and flowers, 1619 Two of the most famously described seventeenth-century cabinets were those of
Ole Worm, known as Olaus Wormius (1588–1654) (
illustration, above right), and
Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). These seventeenth-century cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, as well as other interesting man-made objects: sculptures wondrously old, wondrously fine or wondrously small; clockwork
automata; ethnographic specimens from exotic locations. Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction, including apparently
mythical creatures. Worm's collection contained, for example, what he thought was a
Scythian Lamb, a woolly
fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. However he was also responsible for identifying the
narwhal's tusk as coming from a whale rather than a
unicorn, as most owners of these believed. The specimens displayed were often collected during exploring expeditions and trading voyages. Cabinets of curiosities would often serve scientific advancement when images of their contents were published. The catalog of Worm's collection, published as the
Museum Wormianum (1655), used the collection of artifacts as a starting point for Worm's speculations on philosophy, science, natural history, and more. Cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them. Many
monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. A rather under-used example, stronger in art than other areas, was the
Studiolo of Francesco I, the first Medici Grand-Duke of Tuscany.
Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death, was another such monarch. A third example is the
Kunstkamera founded by
Peter the Great in
Saint Petersburg in 1714. Many items were bought in Amsterdam from
Albertus Seba and
Frederik Ruysch. The fabulous
Habsburg Imperial collection included important
Aztec artifacts, including the
feather head-dress or crown of
Montezuma now in the
Museum of Ethnology, Vienna. Similar collections on a smaller scale were the complex
Kunstschränke produced in the early seventeenth century by the
Augsburg merchant, diplomat and collector
Philipp Hainhofer. These were cabinets in the sense of pieces of furniture, made from all imaginable exotic and expensive materials and filled with contents and ornamental details intended to reflect the entire cosmos on a miniature scale. The best preserved example is the one given by the city of Augsburg to King
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632, which is kept in the
Museum Gustavianum in
Uppsala. The
curio cabinet, as a modern single piece of furniture, is a version of the grander historical examples. The juxtaposition of such disparate objects, according to
Horst Bredekamp's analysis (Bredekamp 1995), encouraged comparisons, finding analogies and parallels and favoured the cultural change from a world viewed as static to a dynamic view of endlessly transforming natural history and a historical perspective that led in the seventeenth century to the germs of a scientific view of reality.
18th century and after s (
Naturkundenmuseum, Berlin) In seventeenth-century parlance, both French and English, a
cabinet came to signify a collection of works of art, which might still also include an assembly of objects of
virtù or curiosities, such as a
virtuoso would find intellectually stimulating. In 1714,
Michael Bernhard Valentini published an early
museological work,
Museum Museorum, an account of the cabinets known to him with catalogues of their contents. In the second half of the eighteenth century,
Belsazar Hacquet (c. 17351815) operated in
Ljubljana, then the capital of
Carniola, a natural history cabinet () that was appreciated throughout Europe and was visited by the highest nobility, including the Holy Roman Emperor,
Joseph II, the Russian grand duke
Paul and
Pope Pius VI, as well as by famous naturalists, such as and . It included a number of minerals, including specimens of mercury from the
Idrija mine, a
herbarium vivum with over 4,000 specimens of Carniolan and foreign plants, a smaller number of animal specimens, a natural history and medical library, and an
anatomical theatre. A late example of the juxtaposition of natural materials with richly worked artifice is provided by the "
Green Vaults" formed by
Augustus the Strong in
Dresden to display his chamber of wonders. The "Enlightenment Gallery" in the
British Museum, installed in the former "Kings Library" room in 2003 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the museum, aims to recreate the abundance and diversity that still characterized museums in the mid-eighteenth century, mixing shells, rock samples and botanical specimens with a great variety of artworks and other man-made objects from all over the world. Some strands of the early universal collections, the bizarre or freakish biological specimens, whether genuine or fake, and the more exotic historical objects, could find a home in commercial
freak shows and
sideshows.
England In 1671, when visiting
Thomas Browne (1605–1682), the courtier
John Evelyn remarked, Late in his life Browne parodied the rising trend of collecting curiosities in his tract
Musaeum Clausum, an inventory of dubious, rumoured and non-existent books, pictures and objects. , 1715, plate from
Wondertooneel der natuur, the lavish published catalogue of this Dutch merchant's collection
Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) an English physician, member of the
Royal Society and the
Royal College of Physicians, and the founder of the
British Museum in London, began sporadically collecting plants in England and France while studying medicine. In 1687, the
Duke of Albemarle offered Sloane a position as personal physician to the West Indies fleet at Jamaica. He accepted and spent fifteen months collecting and cataloguing the native plants, animals, and artificial curiosities (e.g. cultural artifacts of native and enslaved African populations) of Jamaica. This became the basis for his two volume work,
Natural History of Jamaica, published in 1707 and 1725. Sloane returned to England in 1689 with over eight hundred specimens of plants, which were live or mounted on heavy paper in an eight-volume herbarium. He also attempted to bring back live animals (e.g., snakes, an alligator, and an iguana) but they all died before reaching England. Sloane meticulously cataloged and created extensive records for most of the specimens and objects in his collection. He also began to acquire other collections by gift or purchase.
Herman Boerhaave gave him four volumes of plants from Boerhaave's gardens at Leiden. William Charleton, in a bequest in 1702, gave Sloane numerous books of birds, fish, flowers, and shells and his miscellaneous museum consisting of curiosities, miniatures, insects, medals, animals, minerals, precious stones and curiosities in amber. Sloane purchased
Leonard Plukenet's collection in 1710. It consisted of twenty-three volumes with over 8,000 plants from Africa, India, Japan and China.
Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (1630–1715), left him a twelve-volume herbarium from her gardens at Chelsea and Badminton upon her death in 1714. Reverend
Adam Buddle gave Sloane thirteen volumes of British plants. In 1716, Sloane purchased
Engelbert Kaempfer's volume of Japanese plants and
James Petiver's virtual museum of approximately one hundred volumes of plants from Europe, North America, Africa, the Near East, India, and the Orient.
Mark Catesby gave him plants from North America and the West Indies from an expedition funded by Sloane.
Philip Miller gave him twelve volumes of plants grown from the
Chelsea Physic Garden. Sloane acquired approximately three hundred and fifty artificial curiosities from North American Indians, Inuit, South America, Lapland, Siberia, East Indies, and the West Indies, including nine items from Jamaica. "These ethnological artifacts were important because they established a field of collection for the British Museum that was to increase greatly with the explorations of Captain
James Cook in Oceania and Australia and the rapid expansion of the
British Empire." Upon his death in 1753, Sloane bequeathed his sizable collection of 337 volumes to England for £20,000. In 1759,
George II's royal library was added to Sloane's collection to form the foundation of the British Museum.
John Tradescant the Elder (circa 1570s–1638) was a gardener, naturalist, and botanist in the employ of the Duke of Buckingham. He collected plants, bulbs, flowers, vines, berries, and fruit trees from Russia, the Levant, Algiers, France, Bermuda, the Caribbean, and the East Indies. His son,
John Tradescant the Younger (1608–1662) traveled to Virginia in 1637 and collected flowers, plants, shells, an Indian deerskin mantle believed to have belonged to
Powhatan, father of
Pocahontas. Father and son, in addition to botanical specimens, collected zoological (e.g., the
dodo from Mauritius, the upper jaw of a walrus, and armadillos), artificial curiosities (e.g., wampum belts, portraits, lathe turned ivory, weapons, costumes, Oriental footwear and carved alabaster panels) and rarities (e.g., a mermaid's hand, a dragon's egg, two feathers of a phoenix's tail, a piece of the True Cross, and a vial of blood that rained in the Isle of Wight). By the 1630s, the Tradescants displayed their eclectic collection at their residence in South Lambeth. Tradescant's Ark, as it came to be known, was the earliest major cabinet of curiosity in England and open to the public for a small entrance fee.
Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) was a lawyer, chemist, antiquarian,
Freemason, and a member of the Royal Society with a keen interest in
astrology,
alchemy, and botany. Ashmole was also a neighbor of the Tradescants in Lambeth. He financed the publication of
Musaeum Tradescantianum, a catalogue of the Ark collection in 1656. Ashmole, a collector in his own right, acquired the Tradescant Ark in 1659 and added it to his collection of astrological, medical, and historical manuscripts. In 1675, he donated his library and collection and the Tradescant collection to the
University of Oxford, provided that a suitable building be provided to house the collection. Ashmole's donation formed the foundation of the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford." This move to politeness put bars on how one should behave and interact socially, which enabled the distinguishing of the polite from the supposed common or more vulgar members of society. Exhibitions of curiosities (as they were typically odd and foreign marvels) attracted a wide, more general audience, which "[rendered] them more suitable subjects of polite discourse at the Society."
P. T. Barnum established
Barnum's American Museum on five floors in New York, "perpetuating into the 1860s the Wunderkammer tradition of curiosities for gullible, often slow-moving throngs—Barnum's famously sly but effective method of crowd control was to post a sign, 'THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!' at the exit door". In 1908, New York businessmen formed the
Hobby Club, a dining club limited to 50 men, in order to showcase their "cabinets of wonder" and their selected collections. These included literary specimens and
incunabula; antiquities such as ancient armour; precious stones and geological items of interest. Annual formal dinners would be used to open the various collections up to inspection for the other members of the club. == Declining influence ==