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74-480: In 1651, Italian aristocrat and antiquarian Alfonso Donnini donated his " cabinet of curiosities " to the members of the Roman College. The collection contained "various curious and precious things so that they can take care of it and their studies may benefit from it." Father Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), professor of mathematics, physics, and oriental languages, took care of the collection and transformed it into

148-519: 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

222-497: 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. 1735 – 1815) operated in Ljubljana , then the capital of Carniola , a natural history cabinet ( German : Naturalienkabinet ) that

296-542: A mausoleum for himself and his family. The popes later used the building as a fortress and castle, and it is now a museum. The structure was once the tallest building in Rome. The tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian , also called Hadrian's mole , was erected on the right bank (or northern edge) of the Tiber , between 134 and 139 AD. Originally the mausoleum was a decorated cylinder, with

370-421: A cabinet of curiosities has also appeared in recent publications and performances. For example, Cabinet magazine is a quarterly magazine that juxtaposes apparently unrelated cultural artifacts and phenomena to show their interconnectedness in ways that encourage curiosity about the world. The Italian cultural association Wunderkamern uses the theme of historical cabinets of curiosities to explore how "amazement"

444-615: 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

518-447: A garden top and golden quadriga . Hadrian's ashes were placed here a year after his death in Baiae in 138, together with those of his wife Sabina , and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius , who died in 138. Following this, the remains of succeeding emperors were also put here, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217. The urns containing these ashes were probably placed in what

592-405: A hands-on Cabinet of Curiosities, complete with taxidermied crocodile embedded in the ceiling a la Ferrante Imperato's Dell'Historia Naturale . In Los Angeles , the modern-day Museum of Jurassic Technology anachronistically seeks to recreate the sense of wonder that the old cabinets of curiosity once aroused. In Spring Green, Wisconsin , the house and museum of Alex Jordan, known as House on

666-637: A largely representational function, and dominated by aesthetic concerns and a marked predilection for the exotic," or the less grandiose, "the more modest collection of the humanist scholar or virtuoso, which served more practical and scientific purposes." Evans goes on to explain that "no clear distinction existed between the two categories: all collecting was marked by curiosity, shading into credulity, and by some sort of universal underlying design". In addition to cabinets of curiosity serving as an establisher of socioeconomic status for its curator, these cabinets served as entertainment, as particularly illustrated by

740-516: A love of the marvellous. This love was often exploited by eighteenth-century natural philosophers to secure the attention of their audience during their exhibitions. 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

814-619: 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

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888-608: A museum of antiquity, technology, art, science, and archeology. Famous and admired by the most enlightened minds of his time and by his students at the Roman College for his scientific knowledge and philosophical eclecticism, Kircher added natural history objects collected during his expeditions to Sicily (1630) and Malta (1636), musical instruments, and even machines of his own invention. He used his contacts, particularly Jesuits abroad, to augment ethnographic collections with exotic objects from overseas missions . The museum quickly became popular and hosted many visitors. The first catalog

962-685: A new Cabinet of Curiosities room was opened at The Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rawtenstall , Lancashire , curated by artist Bob Frith, founder of Horse and Bamboo Theatre . Several internet bloggers describe their sites as "wunderkammern" either because they are primarily links to interesting things, or inspire wonder similarly to the original wunderkammern (see External Links, below). Researcher Robert Gehl describes such internet video sites as YouTube as modern-day wunderkammern, although in danger of being refined into capitalist institutions "just as professionalized curators refined Wunderkammers into

1036-518: A pagan idol at the church of Santa Agata in Suburra . A vision urged the pope to lead a procession to the church. Upon arriving, the idol miraculously fell apart with a clap of thunder. Returning to St Peter's by the Aelian Bridge , the pope had another vision of an angel atop the castle, wiping the blood from his sword on his mantle, and then sheathing it. While the pope interpreted this as a sign that God

1110-572: 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

1184-488: A prison; Giordano Bruno , for example, was imprisoned there for six years. Other prisoners were the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini and the magician and charlatan Cagliostro . Executions were performed in the small inner courtyard. As a prison, it was also the setting for the third act of Giacomo Puccini 's 1900 opera Tosca ; the eponymous heroine leaps to her death from the Castel's ramparts. During earlier times,

1258-435: A range of cupboards contain specimen boxes and covered jars. 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

1332-575: A reorganization of the collection and produced a monograph on the ancient coins preserved there, the Aes grave del Museo Kircheriano . When Rome was conquered in 1870 and became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy , most of the ecclesiastical properties were expropriated by the new, unified state. The Ennio Quirino Visconti Liceo Ginnasio and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma were placed in

1406-408: A sign of the end of the plague of 590, thus lending the castle its present name. A less charitable yet more apt elaboration of the legend, given the militant disposition of this archangel, was heard by the 15th-century traveler who saw an angel statue on the castle roof. He recounts that during a prolonged season of the plague, Pope Gregory I heard that the populace, even Christians, had begun revering

1480-682: A teaching tool for young physicians. Just prior to Mütter's death in 1859, he donated 1,344 items to the American College of Physicians in Philadelphia, along with a $ 30,000 endowment for the maintenance and expansion of his museum. Mütter's collection was added to ninety-two pathological specimens collected by Doctor Isaac Parrish between 1849 and 1852. The Mütter Museum began to collect antique medical equipment in 1871, including Benjamin Rush 's medical chest and Florence Nightingale 's sewing kit. In 1874

1554-550: 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

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1628-409: A way that, when standing near the castle, it feels as though the heavens themselves are opening up. Being about half an hour away from there, one can still observe it quite clearly. Having spent more than a year in Rome, I was curious to observe it from multiple locations, but found the location near the castle, where one stands beneath the fireworks, to be the most delightful. " Decommissioned in 1901,

1702-575: Is manifested within today's artistic discourse. In May 2008, the University of Leeds Fine Art BA programme hosted a show called "Wunder Kammer", the culmination of research and practice from students, which allowed viewers to encounter work from across all disciplines, ranging from intimate installation to thought-provoking video and highly skilled drawing, punctuated by live performances. The concept has been reinterpreted at The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History . In July 2021

1776-666: Is now known as the Treasury Room, deep within the building. Hadrian also built the Pons Aelius facing straight onto the mausoleum – it still provides a scenic approach from the center of Rome and the left bank of the Tiber, and is renowned for the Baroque additions of statues of angels holding aloft instruments of the Passion of Christ . Much of the tomb contents and decorations have been lost since

1850-456: Is the capstone of a funerary urn (probably that of Hadrian), which made its way to Saint Peter's Basilica , covered the tomb of Otto II and later was incorporated into a massive Renaissance baptistery . The use of spolia from the tomb in the post-Roman period was noted in the 16th century – Giorgio Vasari writes: ...in order to build churches for the use of the Christians, not only were

1924-522: The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Places of exhibitions of and places of new societies that promoted natural knowledge also seemed to culture the idea of perfect civility. Some scholars propose that this was "a reaction against the dogmatism and enthusiasm of the English Civil War and Interregum [sic]. " This move to politeness put bars on how one should behave and interact socially, which enabled

1998-478: 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,

2072-522: 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." Two of

2146-877: 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

2220-630: 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

2294-524: 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 ,

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2368-684: The National Etruscan Museum , the Roman ones to the National Roman Museum , the medieval and Renaissance to the Castel Sant'Angelo and, in 1916, the new Museo nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia . Some curiosities, such as the wooden models of the Roman obelisks, remained at the college; the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography was finally transferred to Roman neighborhood of Europa  [ it ] in

2442-576: 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

2516-479: The Sack of Rome (1527) ; the fortress was also the place in which Benvenuto Cellini , while incarcerated due to charges of embezzlement, murder and sodomy, describes strolling the ramparts and shooting enemy soldiers. Leo X built a chapel with a Madonna by Raffaello da Montelupo . In 1536, Montelupo also created a marble statue of Saint Michael holding his sword after the 590 plague (as described above ) to surmount

2590-558: 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

2664-419: The pope died. When visiting the castel in 1776 Cornelis de Bruijn mentioned the fireworks that were apparently on display once a year. He wrote: " Another fireworks display, remarkable to behold, is the customary yearly celebration on St. Peter's Day at the castle of St. Angelo. It appears as if coming from above the castle, igniting simultaneously and spreading through the crowd of the fireworks in such

2738-676: 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

2812-1032: The 1960s. An exhibition dedicated the Kircherian museum was held in Rome at the Palazzo Venezia in 2001. The Italian Ministero della Cultura published a catalog with photos of objects in the Kircher collection that had been dispersed to other institutions. In recent years, the teachers and pupils of the Liceo Visconti have prepared a museum layout that recalls the historic Kircherian museum. Cabinet of curiosities Cabinets of curiosities ( German : Kunstkammer and Kunstkabinett ), also known as wonder-rooms ( German : Wunderkammer ), were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them,

2886-566: 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

2960-928: 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,

3034-533: The Castel. Later Paul III built a rich apartment, to ensure that in any future siege the pope had an appropriate place to stay. Montelupo's statue was replaced by a bronze statue of the same subject, executed by the Flemish sculptor Peter Anton von Verschaffelt , in 1753. Verschaffelt's is still in place and Montelupo's can be seen in an open court in the interior of the Castle. The Papal State also used Sant'Angelo as

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3108-702: The Marquis Alessandro Gregorio Capponi and King August of Poland added their donations to the museum. The archaeology collection was expanded by the Jesuit Contuccio Contucci, director of the museum between 1741 and 1761. The last Jesuit director of the Museum was the scholar Antonio Maria Ambrogi (1713–1788). In 1773, following the Suppression of the Jesuits by Clement XIV , the Roman College

3182-454: The Rock , can also be interpreted as a modern day curiosity cabinet, especially in the collection and display of automatons. In Bristol, Rhode Island , Musée Patamécanique is presented as a hybrid between an automaton theater and a cabinet of curiosities and contains works representing the field of Patamechanics, an artistic practice and area of study chiefly inspired by Pataphysics . The idea of

3256-501: The Roman College. The Kircherian Museum also became a state museum and between 1881 and 1913 was directed by Luigi Pigorini , who increased its collections by joining the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography to it. In 1913, a decree of the Ministry of Education authorized the definitive dispersion of the collections, which were distributed in the new state museums of the capital. The Etruscan and Italic antiquities went to

3330-493: 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

3404-447: 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 . In 1671, when visiting Thomas Browne (1605–1682), the courtier John Evelyn remarked, His whole house and garden is a paradise and Cabinet of rarities and that of the best collection, amongst Medails, books, Plants, natural things. Late in his life Browne parodied

3478-487: The building's conversion to a military fortress in 401 and its subsequent inclusion in the Aurelian Walls by Flavius Honorius Augustus . The urns and ashes were scattered by Visigoth looters during Alaric 's sacking of Rome in 410, and the original decorative bronze and stone statuary were thrown down upon the attacking Goths when they besieged Rome in 537, as recounted by Procopius . An unusual survivor, however,

3552-419: The classic cabinets of curiosities emerged in the sixteenth century. The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture . Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology , ethnography , archaeology , religious or historical relics , works of art (including cabinet paintings ), and antiquities . In addition to

3626-477: The collection. Over time the museum regained its former glory and thanks to the aid received and the many donations, it became the seat of many important collections on fields of knowledge from experimental philosophy to esotericism to technology. Fathers Orazio Borgondio  [ it ] (1725-1741), Contuccio Contucci  [ it ] (1741-1761) and Antonio Maria Ambrogi  [ it ] (1761-1772) succeeded Bonanni as curators; during this period

3700-788: The company of learned men and that they cannot dwell forever in the Universities." Cabinets of Curiosities can now be found at Snowshill Manor and Wallington Hall , and the Ashmolean Museum has a display of items from its disparate Ashmole and Tradescant founding collections. Thomas Dent Mutter (1811–1859) was an early American pioneer of reconstructive plastic surgery. His specialty was repairing congenital anomalies, cleft lip and palates, and club foot. He also collected medical oddities, tumors, anatomical and pathological specimens, wet and dry preparations, wax models, plaster casts, and illustrations of medical deformities. This collection began as

3774-429: 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. 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

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3848-693: The displayed curiosity. Because of this, many displays simply included a concise description of the phenomena and avoided any mention of explanation for the phenomena. Quentin Skinner describes the early Royal Society as "something much more like a gentleman's club, " an idea supported by John Evelyn , who depicts the Royal Society as "an Assembly of many honorable Gentlemen, who meete inoffensively together under his Majesty's Royal Cognizance; and to entertaine themselves ingenously, whilst their other domestique avocations or publique business deprives them of being always in

3922-561: 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." A subject was considered less suitable for polite discourse if the curiosity being displayed was accompanied by too much other material evidence, as it allowed for less conjecture and exploration of ideas regarding

3996-604: 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

4070-521: 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

4144-637: 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

4218-430: 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,

4292-606: The modern museum in the 18th century." Historic cabinets Modern "cabinets" Castel Sant%27Angelo The Mausoleum of Hadrian , more often known as Castel Sant'Angelo ( pronounced [kaˈstɛl sanˈtandʒelo] ; Italian for 'Castle of the Holy Angel';), is a towering rotunda (cylindrical building) in Parco Adriano , Rome , Italy. It was initially commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as

4366-553: The most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe formed collections that were precursors to museums . Cabinets of curiosities served not only as collections to reflect the particular interests of their curators but also as social devices to establish and uphold rank in society. There are said to be two main types of cabinets. As R. J. W. Evans notes, there could be "the princely cabinet, serving

4440-496: 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

4514-464: The most honoured temples of the idols [pagan Roman gods] destroyed, but in order to ennoble and decorate Saint Peter's with more ornaments than it then possessed, they took away the stone columns from the tomb of Hadrian, now the castle of Sant'Angelo, as well as many other things which we now see in ruins. Legend holds that the Archangel Michael appeared atop the mausoleum, sheathing his sword as

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4588-612: The museum acquired one hundred human skulls from Austrian anatomist and phrenologist, Joseph Hyrtl (1810–1894); a nineteenth-century corpse, dubbed the "soap lady"; the conjoined liver and death cast of Chang and Eng Bunker , the Siamese twins; and in 1893, Grover Cleveland 's jaw tumor. The Mütter Museum is an excellent example of a nineteenth-century grotesque cabinet of medical curiosities. P. T. Barnum established Barnum's American Museum on five floors in New York, "perpetuating into

4662-415: The prison had another remarkable function. Cornelis de Bruijn mentioned that when Pope Clement X died in 1796, all prisoners with heavy sentences were transported to St. Angelo. Then, as soon as the papal seat became vacant, the local city council would release all prisoners from Rome's prisons except those that were locked in St. Angelo. This chain of events was, according to Cornelis, a custom every time

4736-424: The proceedings of the Royal Society , whose early meetings were often a sort of open floor to any Fellow to exhibit the findings his curiosities led him to. However purely educational or investigative these exhibitions may sound, the Fellows in this period supported the idea of "learned entertainment," or the alignment of learning with entertainment. This was not unusual, as the Royal Society had an earlier history of

4810-415: 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

4884-421: The rising trend of collecting curiosities in his tract Musaeum Clausum , an inventory of dubious, rumoured and non-existent books, pictures and objects. 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,

4958-659: 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

5032-509: 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,

5106-620: The various collections up to inspection for the other members of the club. By the early decades of the eighteenth century, curiosities and wondrous specimens began to lose their influence among European natural philosophers. As Enlightenment thinkers placed growing emphasis on patterns and systems within nature, anomalies and rarities came to be regarded as potentially misleading objects of study. Curiosities, previously interpreted as divine messages and expressions of nature's variety, were increasingly seen as vulgar exceptions to nature's overall uniformity. The Houston Museum of Natural Science houses

5180-412: Was appeased, this did not prevent Gregory from destroying more sites of pagan worship in Rome. The popes converted the structure into a castle, beginning in the 14th century; Pope Nicholas III connected the castle to St Peter's Basilica by a covered fortified corridor called the Passetto di Borgo . The fortress was the refuge of Pope Clement VII from the siege of Charles V 's Landsknechte during

5254-403: 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 Francesco Griselini  [ it ] and Franz Benedikt Hermann  [ de ] . It included a number of minerals, including specimens of mercury from the Idrija mine,

5328-576: Was entrusted to the clergy of Rome and the collections began to undergo drastic alterations: many finds ended up in the Pio-Clementino Museum in the Vatican Museums. In 1814, the Society of Jesus was reconstituted by Pius VII , and in 1824, Leo XII returned the college and museum to the Jesuits. From 1839 and for almost twenty years, the museum was directed by Giuseppe Marchi . Marchi attempted

5402-425: Was published in 1678 by Giorgio de Sepibus and included some illustrated tables, today the only evidence of the museun's layout. After Kircher's death in 1680, the museum went through a period of neglect. It took on new life and vigor thanks to the activity of the new curator Filippo Bonanni who published a second catalog in 1709. By comparing the two catalogs, it is clear that many objects had already disappeared from

5476-563: 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

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