Cabinet of curiosities
See also: Cabinet
The cabinet of curiosities was a place where and objects collected exposed were stored, with a certain taste for the heteroclism and the new. One usually found there Médaille S, antiquities, objects of Natural history (like empaillés animals , Insecte S dried, Coquillage S, skeletons, carapaces, Herbier S, Fossile S) or works of Article.
Appeared with the Renaissance in Europe, the cabinets of curiosities are the ancestor of the Musée S and of the Muséum S. They played a fundamental role in the rise of the modern Science even if they kept the traces of the popular beliefs of the time (it was not rare to find there blood of dried dragon or mythical skeletons of animals). The edition of catalogs which made an inventory of it, often illustrated, made it possible to diffuse the contents near the European scientists of it.
The principle of the cabinet of curiosities disappeared during the 19th century, replaced by official institutions and the private collections. Those still played a great part in certain scientific disciplines like the Entomologie or the Conchyliologie.
The subject was in particular studied by the historian of art Viennese Julius von Schlosser (which devotes to him, in 1908, a work, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance ) and by Patricia Falguières, enquiring in the Center of sociology of work and arts and professeure at the practical School of the high studies in Social sciences. According to the latter, the rooms of wonders would be to distinguish from the cabinets of curiosity.
The constitution of the rooms of wonders fits, according to Patricia Falguières, in the line of the steps inherited the Onomasticon S antiques and would aim at gathering memorabilia or mirabilia , that is to say memorable things, objects or elements, memories to be memorized. It would act, according to it, of “systems of commonplaces” classifying “ as many facts , LMBO, observationes or historiae, which has of another determination only to be offered to work memory . ”
Elements of history
- Ole WORM (1588-1654) constitutes a famous cabinet of curiosities whose illustrated inventory appears in 1655, Museum Wormianum ;
- Rodolphe II of the Holy roman Empire (Rodolphe II of Hasbourg, 1552-1612), enthusiast of esotericism, constitutes a room of wonders whose inventory will be drawn up about 1600;
- Honore d' Urfé (1568-1625) constitutes a cabinet of curiosities;
- Georg Everhard Rumphius (1627-1702) delivers the catalog of its Cabinet;
- Albertus Seba (1665-1736) constitutes a cabinet of curiosities whose catalog appears as from 1710;
- Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) gathers one of the large cabinets of curiosity of the world. It is at the origin of the creation of the British Museum;
- Rene-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683-1757) assembles the largest cabinet of France. Into its death, it will be integrated into the Cabinet of the king;
- Towards 1760, Sir James Darcy Rising starts to pile up an immense collection which will ruin it. It will be completely dispersed, the British government not having wanted to become purchaser.
Organization of the collections
In the cabinets of curiosities, the collections can be organized in four categories (named in Latin):- artificialia , which gathers the objects created or modified by the Man (antiquities, works of art);
- naturalia , which gathers the natural creatures and objects (with an private interest for the Monstre S);
- exotica , which gathers the plants and animal exotic;
- scientifica , which gathers the scientific instruments.
See too
Bibliographical orientation
- Patricia Falguières, Rooms of the wonders - the ray of curiosities , Bayard-Centurion, Paris, 2003.
- Olivier Impey and Arthur Macgregor, The origins off natural history musea: the cabinet off curiosities in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe , New York, Ursus Near, 2001, xx + 431 pages.
- Pierre Martin and Dominique Moncond' Huy, Curiosity and cabinets of curiosities , Neuilly, Atlande, 2004,202 pages.
- Antoine Schnapper, the giant, the unicorn and the tulip; collections and collectors in France of the XVIIe century. I. History and natural history , Flammarion, collection “Art, History, Company”, 1988,415 pages.
External bonds
- Site of Gilles Thibault, student of the department of history of art