Vienna, of course, is a cultural hub. We focused on two national museums situated in two imposing baroque and vitually identical buildings facing each other across an open mall, the Natural History Museum and the Art History Museum. The parallel architecture and placement of these museums suggest that art and natural history are equally important, a familiar wunderkammer theme.

These are two vibrant modern museums, but each has chunks of their founding wunderkammern collections present.

The Art History Museum contains an in-tact sliver of Rudolf II’s massive wunderkammer. Rudolf II (1552-1612), became Holy Roman Emperor in 1576 upon the death of his Hapsburg father Maximillian II. He moved himself, his collections and his government to Prague in 1583 to Hradcany castle, the world’s largest castle, and there built the world’s largest wunderkammer, including “everything rich and strange”. Rudolf was given to depression/ melancholy. His kingdom was dominated by struggles between Catholics and Protestants and it seems he withdrew more and more from public life to his collections. Rudolf possessed a wunderkammer which was a complete microcosm of the world symbolizing that he was master of the world (Kenseth, p85). And clearly he found this microcosm a more reassuring place than his fractious court where plots to depose him became increasingly common. Relaxing his claim on absolute power somewhat, he was able to keep his crown and (perhaps more importantly to him) maintain a network of agents worldwide to search out wonders for his collection. You might recall from Chapter 9 he bought the entire Ambras collection in 1600. But upon his death in 1612 his collection was scattered and only a small grouping of his antiquities remained in tact as a collection. This collection was eventually brought to Vienna.

Here is a classical carved Roman eagle in agate, and at the beginning of this chapter is another ancient agate cameo in a jewel mount surmounted by the Hapsburg eagle commissioned by Rudolf.

Here is a collection of ancient signet rings attractively back lit.

Rudolf’s collection also includes ancient statuary.

Elsewhere in the museum are other elements of Rudolf’s collection such as this collection of miniature painting on ivory of Hapsburg family members created for the Ambras wunderkammer and bought as part of that purchase in 1600.

Similarly here is a cabinet of the type Rudolf used to house parts of his vast collection.

The general collection has two painting while not Rudolf’s are very typical of the wonder chamber. This work, a self portrait by Parmigianno (1505-1540), demonstrates the highest tromp l’oeil (trick of the eye) skills. The painting appears to be on a convex silvered surface but is in fact rendered on a flat canvas. All the curvature optics are faux. The degree of difficulty is high, the virtuosity extreme and the effect truly wondrous.

This vegetable face by G. Arcemboldo, c1563, is more virtuosity and tromp l’oeil. Each vegetable is a perfect still live of a vegetable. These are assembled to form a face which would fool you briefly from a distance. What is real, what is faux, all done with a sense of humor. Rudolf had his portrait done by Arcemboldo, reportedly his favorite artist, with a pair for his nose and a thistle for his chin(Mauries, p.129).

While the portion of Rudolf’s wunderkammer in the museum is limited, the art collection here is not limited at all, being one of the world’s most eminent museums, ranging from Egyptian to the 18th century, and making for an enjoyable visit.

The Natural History Museum across the mall traces its ancestry to Franz Stefan (1708-65) married to Maria Theresa (1717-80) who was elected holy Roman Emperor in 1745, almost 200 years after Rudolf’s birth. In 1748 Franz Stefan bought as core of his collection a 30,000 specimen collection of natural history assembled by a Florentine and former curator of the Medici duke of Tuscany whose dukedom reverted to Franz Stefan when the Medici line became extinct (MacGregor, p16).

Here Franz Stefan is pictured with his collections in their original location.

When he died in1765, Maria Theresa created the current museum in its current location. This collection is now embedded in a major modern museum of 20 million objects, but the museum still retains its “age of reason” feel, a holdover from Franz Stefan and the twilight days of the wunderkammer.

One of the prizes in the mineral collection is Maria Theresa’s rock crystal (quartz) vase filled with a bouquet of flowers constructed of precious and semiprecious stones.

The museum scope is encyclopedic. There are rooms of fossils, such as these ammonites.

There are rooms of taxidermy such as these cases of birds in late 18th century glass cases.

Here the eggs of ostriches and emus are compared with that (center) of the extinct elephant bird.

And the iconic crocodile is presented in the collection not suspended mysteriously from the ceiling but rather exhibited in the proper taxonomic grouping as proscribed by Linneaus.

These two Vienna museums are first and foremost major modern museums but do retain outcroppings of the original feeling of wonder constructed by their Hapsburg emperor forbearers. You’ll need at least half a day in each museum.

References:
The Age of the Marvelous, Joy Kenseth (Hanover, NH, 1991).
Curiosity and Enlightment, Arthur MacGregor (New Haven, CT, 2007).
Cabinets of Curiosities, Patrick Mauries (London, 2002).

Unfortunately, it was over 95% destroyed by war and voluntary dispersal, and the only vestige today is the collection of precious materials retained by the Bavarian treasury. Fortunately, the items which do remain are well worth a visit.

While the entire wunderkammer before dispersal may well have demonstrated a thirst for universal knowledge, the princely items which remain in the treasury certainly would have inspired the kind of respect and fear that must have favorably impacted Albrecht’s statecraft.

The collection today is placed in 10 adjoining rooms in the Munich Residence in modern, well-lit display cases. Some of these princely objects include:

The earliest English Queen crown extant, made about 1575.

An early goblet, made of silver-and gold-mounted narwhale tusk with a cover of gold-mounted ostrich egg shell. Dated c1530 it is indeed an early wunderkammer item, and shows the early fascination with the exotic.

A spectacular enameled and jeweled gold and silver sculpture of St George and the Dragon.

A tortoise shell crucifix, where the body of Christ is perfectly molded in tortoise shell by a method now lost and irreproducible.

A group of gold-mounted bezoars and jeweled rhinoceros-horn vessels prized for their alleged capacity to neutralize poison in any beverage they contained. (A bezoar is a hairball or other indigestible solid recovered from the digestive system of man or animal. Bezoars have been clinically shown to bind certain poisons, namely arsenic.)

A lapis lazuli platter showing the collaboration of man and nature to create beauty, a commonly repeated wunderkammer theme.

A white enameled and jeweled covered urn fabricated for Albrecht by a local Munich area goldsmith.

A carved 16th century ivory and ruby encrusted casket from Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

Finally, an ancient Olmec jade mask from Central America incorporated into a seated figure by a 16th century European goldsmith.

The treasury (schatzkammer) can be comfortably seen in an hour or so, but additional time should be set aside to view the large Residence Museum which houses it. This Residence was the seat of Bavaria’s ruling dynasty, the Wittelsbachs, until 1918.

The address of the Munich Residence is Residenzstrasse 1, 80330 Munchen (Munich), and the web site, www.residenz-muenchen.de.
References:
The Age of the Marvelous, Joy Kenseth, (Hanover, NH, 1991).
Curiosity and Enlightenment, Arthur MacGregor, (New Haven, CT, 2007).