The Discovery of Nature
Natural Objects in 16th and 17th Century Kunstkammer-Collections
Crocodiles suspended from ceilings, elephant tusks, rhinoceros’ horns, ostrich eggs and coral branches, coconuts and mollusk bowls as well as rare minerals and fossils once adorned the rooms housing sixteenth and seventeenth century Kunstkammer-collections. Two Habsburgs, Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595) and the Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612), assembled outstanding collections in which such naturalia featured as prominently as precious works of art. Of particular interest were curiosities and exotic natural objects brought back to Europe from far-flung corners of the globe during this age of discoveries. Many of these natural objects were also credited with magical and healing powers. Besides such princely Kunstkammer-collections, however, the sixteenth and seventeenth century also witnessed the development of naturalist collections. Particularly doctors and apothecaries assembled such collections for study and research purposes, and they reflect the increase in and the systematization of knowledge. They were something like walk-in encyclopedias that also served as visual teaching-aids. The seventeenth and eighteenth century witnessed a continual increase in scientific knowledge and this spelt the end of the side-by-side display of disparate objects that had characterized princely Kunstkammer-collections during the Renaissance. Basilisks and serpent’s tongues, griffin’s claws and unicorns - considered particularly precious rarities in earlier collections – were recognized as fossilized shark’s teeth, bats or narwhale tusks and thus robbed of their magic. Nature and art were increasingly separated and displayed in specialized museums. In Vienna too the holdings of the former Kunstkammer-collections assembled by members of the House of Habsburg were taken apart in the nineteenth century to be displayed in the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Natural History (the Kunsthistorische Museum and the Naturhistorische Museum) respectively.
The exhibition „The Discovery of Nature. Natural Objects in 16th and 17th Century Kunstkammer-Collections”, shown from June 13 through September 3, 2007 at the Natural History Museum, re-unites for a time parts of these holdings in order to document the high regard in which exceptional natural objects were held in the context of early Habsburg collections.
Natural objects from land, water and air will be displayed both in their original, unadulterated or un-worked state and in refined form when they have been turned into artworks. On show will be early anatomical studies and depictions of unusual people. Hairmen, giants or dwarfs were considered “whims of nature” and as such eagerly included in Kunstkammer-collections. The exhibition will also feature important scholarly works on natural history and illustrations that document the extend of scientific knowledge available in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
The exhibition, shown at Ambras Palace in the summer of 2006, will be shown in Vienna as a collaboration between the Natural History Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Many loans come from Ambras, the KHM’s Collection of Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and many other important institutions.
