PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

the Fugger family and seventeenth-century cabinets of wonders such as that of the
renowned intellectual and polymath Athanasius Kircher. 859 At an alternate level,
princely collections existing since the middle of the sixteenth century such as the
collection of August II, Elector of Saxony, revealed a different aspect of cabinets of
curiosity associated with court culture and the display of power. The same aspirations
characterised the royal collections of the Habsburgs, including the unrivalled
collection of Rudolph II in Prague. 860 No matter if they were secular, princely or
royal, such collections had a common aim: the display of cultivation and learning.
When trying to assess collecting in the early modern period, modern research has
stressed the important aspects of replicating Nature’s creations, the attempt to assert
human control over the natural world, and the idea of Nature as the source of
productive knowledge. 861 This latter idea can be seen in the work Theatrum
Sapientiae (1565) by Flemish Samuel Quiccheberg, who regarded collecting as
metaphysics which would lead to the production of knowledge and thus unlock the
doors of wisdom in all fields of learning. 862 It was probably this same aspect of
collecting knowledge which had an impact on contemporary literature and on the idea
of popular works such as Boaistuau’s Histoires prodigieuses, whose views resembled
cabinets of curiosity on paper. The central ideas behind them can be summarized by
859 For an introduction to this multi-talented German thinker see Findlen, P. (ed.), Athanasius Kircher:
The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York, 2004).
860 See Evans, R. J. W., Rudolph II and his World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576-1612 (Oxford,
1973). Also see Marshall, P. H., The Theatre of the World: Alchemy, Astrology and Magic in
Renaissance Prague (London, 2006).
861 Smith, P. H., ‘Collecting Nature and Art’, in Daston, L., Vidal, F. (eds), The Moral Authority of
Nature (Chicago, 2004), pp. 115-135; Meadow, M. A., ‘Merchants and Marvels: Hans Jacob Fugger
and the Origins of the Wunderkammer’, in Smith, P. H., Findlen, P. (eds), Merchants and Marvels:
Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York, 2002), pp. 182-200; McGregor, M.,
Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century
(New Haven, 2008).
862 Samuel Quiccheberg (1529-1567) was a physician, librarian and counselor of the German prince
Albrecht V, and is considered to have been the founder of museum education in Germany.
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