This chamber of curiosities has a second-period format, with an age-of-reason feel. Here similar items are grouped together and displayed in a manner which adheres to modern taxonomic notions. Along the south wall, items of natural history and science are displayed, and the minerals are presented by mineralogical family, the shells by genus within family, etc. The facing wall includes man-made materials, textiles, ethnographic artifacts, boxes and tools, also presented in a logical manner. As discussed in chapter 2, first-period wunderkammern would have more of a helter-skelter feel.

You first encounter a reasonably large mineral collection consisting of about 1500 of the world’s 4000 known minerals. The silicates are segregated from the sulfides and sulfates, etc. Some minerals are represented by beautifully-formed crystals, such as tourmaline and aquamarine. The specimens tend to be relatively small sized…fist size or smaller due to the space constraint. The extra-terrestrial section includes a meteorite found in Namibia and a piece of the Challenger space shuttle found in the Bahamas.

Two sections are dedicated to shells. You’ll note the drawers below are filled with specimens as well. This collection also includes about 1500 specimens, including some of the great rarities like the golden cowries, worn by Tahiti Chieftains as the emblem of their authority, and the imperial slit shell, traditionally thought to become automatically the property of the Emperor of Japan whenever recovered from the sea.

The next section displays a collection of US patent models from the period 1836 to 1880. This section represents science and technology, a typical wunderkammer theme. In the US, patent applications were normally submitted with a working model demonstrating the invention. To save space the Patent Office required these to be no bigger than a foot in any dimension. If the application was granted, the patent number was sequentially assigned –patent #1 was issued July,13,1836–and the model was put on display open to the general public at the Patent Office in Washington, DC. This was a very popular tourist site in the 19th century.

Nonetheless, the Patent Office ended the patent model after 45 years. Crammed with over 200,000 of these models, and believing better quality patents would be written if the inventors relied only on their words and diagrams, the Patent Office no longer accepted models with the applications after 1880. Twice fires raged through the collection destroying many of them, and finally the Patent Office sold off the remaining patent models in the 1940’s. The collection illustrated here consists of several hundred of them, including one issued September,22,1836, patent # 30, the model with lowest patent number in private hands. (Numbers 1-29 are in the Smithsonian.)

Here are a variety of wood working tools, drills, planes, hammers, saws, etc, through out the ages. Examples of the ax here date from as early as 4000BC and continue through Minoan Crete, 2000BC, through Roman, medieval, and to the 17th through 19th centuries. There are stone-age examples as well, from prehistory through American Indian to modern-day New Guinea. It’s fun to trace the evolution of such a simple and necessary item throughout history.

In the next section, see all the variety the simple idea of the box congers up. These examples date from the 17th to 19th centuries, represent all cultures, and are executed in all materials, from straw to gold.

This next section displays ancient and ethnographic material. The top two shelves are Asian, the next, Mesoamerican, the next classical Egyptian, Greek and Roman, and the last three shelves, Native American. Some connections are unexpected. For instance, all the glass beads here, those from 18th century China, 19th century Sumatra and Africa, those from 19th century Aleutian Islands, and those from 19th century American plains Indians were all made in the small Italian city of Venice. Venice had the world-wide monopoly in glass bead making from the renaissance through the 19th century, a monopoly it maintained by forbidding , on pain of death, its glass bead workers from leaving the city.

A collection of textiles includes a number of American quilts as well as 16th through 18th century needle works. Not shown are other collections of bronze-age implements, glass bottles from Roman to the 19th century, birds’ eggs from 19th century collections, butterflies, and so on.

This last section shows two unrelated collections, one of 19th century American enameled granite ware or agate ware (a cheap decorative surface put on common cookware to brighten up the day of the common man) and one of items decorated with feathers (from exotic feather headdresses from the jungles of Peru and New Guinea, to a pre-Columbian c 800AD cotton and feather pouch–top shelf, left–to fans and ladies hats from the Roaring 20’s.) These two materials contrast sharply, one being cheap, plentiful (at least at the time of manufacture), and indestructibly utilitarian, the other being rare, exotic and fragile. Yet when juxtaposed next to each other, a certain tension is created which adds drama to the presentation. This intentional juxtaposition is what the first-period wunderkammernists strived for. Moreover, alternating the two kinds of items was specifically recommended by Samuel Quiccheburg in his important treatise on wunderkammern, published in 1565, considered the definitive manual for marvels and curiosities.

This wunderkammer, I am assured, helps the owner celebrate on a daily basis what a great world it is, brings him much pleasure, and improves his mind. Do you know of any private curiosity cabinets, large or small which perform the same service for their owners? Please email me if you do at funstonantiques.com.

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).

About 6 hours south of Kassel, and on the other side of the Alps is the beautiful city of Innsbruck, Austria, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and nestled in a lush green valley ablaze, in early May, with the cherry and lilac blossoms.

It is here that Hapsburg Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595) moved to in 1564, converting a gothic castle into a Renaissance palace, and here that one of the most satisfying wunderkammern can be seen today. It is exhibited in the same place and in much the same manner as was first installed by Ferdinand in the 1560’s.

Ferdinand’s father, uncle and older brother were each Holy Roman Emperors. His uncle, Charles V (1500-1558) was perhaps the best known and most powerful Holy Roman Emperor of all times, and the empire then included Austria, Hungary, upper Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.

So Ferdinand II had plenty of money and plenty of free time and he put both to good use in assembling one of the most famous wunderkammern of his time. Though it was sold for a fortune by his son about 1600 to Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) and was then temporarily moved twice to avoid the devastation of war (during the Napoleonic era and World War II), this collection has remained quite in tact. And what we see today is quite similar to what Ferdinand left behind.

His plan (and the one used today) was to group items based upon the materials they were composed of, and place each group in its own floor-to-ceiling case, where the background color was chosen to show that group to best advantage. Thus the goldsmith items were presented against a blue background, the wood against red, the stone against green, etc.

The goldsmith items usually were natural items of great rarity set in gold settings. For instance, here is a coconut shell, a rare and wondrous item in the 1560’s and one reputed to have magical healing properties, mounted as a chalice with gold base, handles and ornamentation. The blue, as selected by Ferdinand, sets off the gold work nicely.

18 such cases were placed in the middle of this large room back to back in rows of 9, and the walls and ceiling at the perimeter were richly hung with paintings and oversized items (Auer et al, p 30).

The collection was encyclopedic, and the scope as broad as possible with naturalia and artificialia from all fields of knowledge. And the various collections were presented side by side with the gold and treasury items to underscore the idea that all of God’s works were of equal value.

The categories included many predictable ones for a princely wunderkammer, goldsmith works, stone works, instruments (scientific as well as musical), bronzes, and exotica such as ivory and mother of pearl works, but then also ones of particular interest to Ferdinand, such as hand stones, coral, wood turnings produced by his turnery, glass, including that executed by his own glassworks, and natural history.

Hand stones were bizarrely shaped rocks and minerals sized to fit your palm that were then trimmed with tiny gold and silver figurines. Here a porous mineral specimen has had its niches filled with gold support columns and subterranean human figures, all surmounted by Christ’s crucifixion.

Ferdinand II owned the world’s most important collection of hand stones of his time (Auer et al, p36).Here is another hand stone where the natural specimen seems to be white coral. Biblical figures rest about its base while one of their numbers receives a visitation by an angel, who you can see atop the coral column. This is a particularly beautiful object.

Coral was richly represented. Here a collection of a wide variety was mounted on bases, and at the beginning of this chapter, naturalistic coral had sections carved in the image of Christ’s crucifixion.

Wood was elevated by being so skillfully turned and filigreed often by Ferdinand’s own turners. See the detail of a large Tirol sepulcher c1575 as well as a similar work in ivory.

Similarly Ferdinand’s love for Venetian glass caused him to found his own glass works, producing these crucifixes. (You can’t help but notice how often the subject is a crucifix…you might say they were crusi-fixated.)

This glass works also produced glass images. This example shows an image of Adam and Eve on paper sprinkled with powdered glass and featuring glass trees and figures.

The bold architectural design of this brass and iron lock shows that base metal works deserve inclusion in the wunderkammer.

Mandrake roots naturally occur in the rough shape of the human form and so were valued for their alleged magical properties. This mandrake root looks like a crucifix and would have been doubly prized as an example of mirabilia, an object demonstrating a miracle.

And just plain bizarre: here is a pair of leather boots from the mid 16th century where the toes are individually sheathed like gloved fingers.

The walls and ceiling at the perimeter of the room are here hung with a 16th century taxidermist’s shark lurking among other naturalia.

The adjacent 3 rooms house Ferdinand’s collection of knightly armor and Renaissance military weaponry. In 1564 he had 17 tons of armor transported to Ambras. The knightly material give witness to how important jousting was as a form of courtly entertainment in Ferdinand’s time, while the military material reminds us of how conscious the Hapsburgs were of the nearby threat of the Turks who occupied Eastern Europe.

Ambras is not to be missed. I’d recommend most of a day for the armory, wunderkammer, and the impressive portrait gallery in the main palace (see info.ambras@khm.at.) After your visit, I cannot recommend strongly enough a trip across town to Cafe Konditorei (Schneeburggasse 3, A-6020 Innsbruck) for pastry. They offer a wide choice of the best pastry I have ever tasted as well as light meals and cocktails.

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References:
Ambras Castle, Alfred Auer, Veronika Sandbicher, KarlSchutz, and Christian Beauford-Spontin, Translated by John Winbigler, (Vienna, 2000).

Their collection was begun by Landgrave Wilhelm “the Wise” (Wilhelm IV who died 1597), continued by his son, Moritz “the Learned” (died 1627), and his descendant Karl in the late 17th century. And in the 1770’s, Landgrave Frederich II sponsored one of the first museums open to the public.

Unfortunately the princely wunderkammer no longer exists, but many of the items remain in the city distributed among the museums there. Thus you must assemble the wunderkammer in your mind by visiting the Ottonium for natural history, the nearby Orangery for scientific instruments and the kunstkammer for art.

Natural History at the Ottonium

Built under Landgrave Moritz about 1600 and made over with a baroque look about 1700 by Landgrave Karl, the Ottonium housed the entire chamber of curiosities and observatory. Later the art and other artificialia was move out leaving only the natural history which was more recently incorporated into a modern nature museum. A good portion of the first floor exhibits the Landgraves’ naturalia from the 16th through 18th centuries.

One of the most wondrous elements is Scheldbach’s “wood library”, consisting of over 500 “books” and representing 441 species of woody trees and shrubs. Carl Scheldbach was the Landgraves park administrator in the late 18th century and built this library in his spare time.

Each book is really a box constructed from the wood and bark of a given species of tree or shrub, one cover being made of a polished sample of heart wood, the other, sap wood. The top is made of cross sections of that species’ wood and the spine, of its bark. The interior shows the entire life-cycle of that species, including the seedling, the mature leaves and branches as well as the flower, fruit, seed pod or nut, often made of wax and showing the various colors as ripening occurs. Finally, notes on husbandry and pests are included on the inside of the cover. A microcosm of a huge tree is compressed into a small box. (Eat your heart out, Joseph Cornell!)

Catherine the Great of Russia tried to purchase this library for her wunderkammer for 2,000 thalers, but the Landgrave was able to keep it in Kassel.

A large cabinet of rocks and minerals also contains a collection of models of various crystal shapes, each painstakingly made of paper.

A copper miners’ group gave this cabinet built around a slab of naturally-occurring rock strata to the Landgrave at the end of the 18th century.

The collection also contains a large 16th century herbarium, one of the earliest in Europe.

The Astronomical and Physics Cabinet at the Orangery

A ten-minute walk away, a superb collection of scientific instruments is housed in the Landgraves’ former Orangery (an elaborate greenhouse for growing oranges).

Wilhelm the Wise was an accomplished astronomer and mathematician and personally used many of the instruments here to make celestial observations and help chart the heavens.

Wilhelm was also keenly interested in clocks, maintaining a sizable collection, and calibrated them to his celestial observations.

At the beginning of the chapter is one of Wilhelm’s fine brass globes, made in the late 16th century. It is interesting that so much navigational and astronomical study was done by a land-locked prince with no navy or shipping. Again we see an illustration of the importance to the renaissance prince of measuring nature, the first step towards controlling it.

Here is another measuring tool, the hygroscope, purporting to measure humidity. The moister the air, the wetter the cotton ball at on end of the balance, and the needle would move. The accuracy was not great but the artistry was.

Here is a microscope made by Englishman Robert Hooke (1635-1703). Although Galileo invented the microscope, Hooke improved it and was the first really to use it to publish results…for instance, he was the one to coin the word “cell” to describe the building block of life…thus Hooke is known as the father of microscopy. The microscope revealed whole new worlds right under your nose and was a wunderkammer favorite.

Here is a table full of 18th century electrical experimental equipment also added during Karl’s rule. Landgrave Karl founded the Collegium Carolinum in 1709 which soon became a center of scientific investigation (Ottonium web site).

Art at the Schloss Wilhelmshohe Kunstkammer

A 20-minute bus ride across town takes you to the kunstkammer housed in the elegant baroque schloss situated, in turn, on beautifully landscaped grounds. The art collection house here, particularly for old masters, is staggering.

Here is the famous painting of Elsabeth Tucker by Albrecht Durer in 1499.

There are 2 large rooms full of Rembrandt’s alone, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, I suspect. I noticed one small impressionistic one of a winter scene and learned the great master would do quick sketches, in this case outside in winter, before commencing a major work.

Some of this collection began in the Ottonium, was moved by Landgrave Frederich to the Fridericianum in the 1770’s when that museum was opened to the public, and then moved here. I probably should have worked to tease out what part of this collection was original to the wunderkammer, but instead I was just let myself be overwhelmed by how extraordinary the collection was.

Conclusion

I’d recommend an hour or so for each of the Ottonium and the Orangery, and a few hours at the Schloss Kunstkammer, say the better part of a day for it all. Though there is really no wunderkammer in Kassel, there is a lot to wonder at! Start by visiting the Ottonium web site at www.naturkundemuseum-kassel.de.

Founded in 1698 by Lutheran theologian and educator August Herman Francke (1663-1727), the Foundation was first and foremost an orphanage and secondly a progressive school for all social classes. Thus Francke formed the wunderkammer as a teaching tool. Francke was obviously an effective fundraiser for not only did he raise the money to build the substantial Foundation but also induced people worldwide to provide as gifts most of the almost 5000 items of the collection.

A decade after this kindly-looking gentleman’s death, a local artist and naturalist, Gottfried August Grundler (1710-1775), began to reorganize the jumble systematically and create a group of 16 individual cabinets, one for each category, and each one beautifully painted to communicate the theme. The result is a second period systematically organized wunderkammer presented behind the very glass cabinets created for them in the 1730’3 and 1740’s.

Surviving the wars in tact , the wunderkammer was then threatened for a while in the East German era by leaky roofs and other deferred maintenance, thus some restoration was done in the early 1990’s. This was done closely referring to Grundler’s original documents, placing all cabinets in their original position in the orphanage attic. Thus today we have an excellently preserved example of a well-sponsored, middle-class baroque wunderkammer, which one author calls “perhaps the most complete survivor of a cabinet of curiosities” (Mauries,p 25-7) The natural history is concentrated at one end, and the man-made artificialia at the other.

Here the minerals and petrifactions (fossils) are presented in a case the crest of which is painted with a garland of rocks and crystals. This collection was donated in part by an influential father of a student (Bahlke, p4). Other components were sent by fellow Pietists, believers in that form of Lutheranism Francke preached. Nearby (not shown) is a similar cabinet of sea shells.

The plants case, painted with floral garlands and a face composed of plant parts (after Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1527-1593) houses exotic seed pods, nuts, dried fruits, branches, roots and leaves.

The animal kingdom cabinet is painted with a garland of frogs, bats and butterflies all of which is surmounted with a grinning leopard.

The animal cabinet houses a number of specimens preserved in spirits such as the eerie group of fetuses, reminiscent of the presentation in Waldenburg (Chapter 5).

There is also an egg collection, some of which was donated by the elector of Brandenburg, straight from his wunderkanmmer.

The artificialia end of the large room contains a case with artifacts from India, painted with a native from that subcontinent, and another case for Borneo. The contents were provided by fellow Pietist missionaries stationed in those remote areas.

Another cabinet was reserved for manuscripts and writing instruments of the world, its crest painted with 25 specimens of different alphabets and scripts. The written word was particularly important to Pietists as the one pure form of communication, versus pictures, paintings, theatre, and music, all of which were a tad too worldly and decadent for their tastes (Bahlke, p19).

Another section is dedicated to a collection of conception models or mechanical models. A nearby cabinet (not shown) holds holy items from other religions, another, fine art, another, clothing of the world, and another, a collection of masks and coins.

The middle of the room contains oversized specimens, including at the natural history end the obligatory crocodile (see photo at the start of this chapter), huge whale bones, python skins, etc, and at the man-made end, an Eskimo kayak, exotic and medieval armor, etc.

Finally the center of the room is dominated by globes, models of the planetary system and universe.

While the classification of this collection feels somewhat modern (after all, its designer Grundler paid for translating Linneus’s Systema Natura into German), the scope of the collection is universal or encyclopedic, consistent with a wunderkammer goal of creating a microcosm of God’s entire universe in one room.

One of the more authentic and untouched wunderkammern, the Halle wonder chamber is definitely worth a visit. Bring a flashlight because the contents of the cases are sometimes shaded by the glass doors. We were lucky enough to receive a fascinating guided tour by Dr. Claus Veltmann, the curator. The booklet published by the Francke Foundation noted as a reference below as translated into English also provides a great guide…be sure to ask for one if not available in the bookstore.

An hour and a half is sufficient to see the wunderkammer and I’d also recommend viewing Francke’s nearby library of 35,000 books as well as the Foundation grounds which also serves the local university. The address is Francenplatz 1, 06110 Halle and the web site www.francke-halle.de.

References:

Cabinets of Curiosities, Patrick Mauries, (London,2002)

The Cabinet of Artefacts and Curiosities in the Francke Foundation in Halle, Dr.Thomas Muller-Bahlke, Halle,2004) as translated by Helen Louise Tate