Constructing Curiosity Exhibition

1. CONSTRUCTING CURIOSITY
with Early Modern Objects of Wonder
By Mia Jackson

2. Entering the Curiosity Cabinet
In Duke Cosimo de Medici’s curiosity cabinet, pre-colonial Mesoamerican cloaks were
inventoried as “costumes,” and a pair of turquoise Aztec masks labeled as “jewelry.”
According to surviving catalogues, none of the objects in his collection were sorted by
geographical origin, but instead integrated into Eurocentric understandings of tradition and
purpose. Such misappropriations are at the defining core of the cabinet of curiosity, or
Wunderkammer (“wonder room”). As furniture or rooms that held collections of foreign
objects, curiosity cabinets assumed conflicting roles. On one hand, they attempted to
preserve and categorize naturalia—flora, fauna, and minerals—alongside artificialia—
human-made artifacts like coins and pottery. On the other, most collections were owned by
princes or emperors, and were political tools used to impress nobility. Curious cabinets in
practice exhibited a desire to control and reframe the newly unfamiliar, to reconcile
indigenous artifacts and native species with European conceptions of tradition, nature,
religion, and myth. Constructing Curiosity considers how objects of wonder functioned as
miniature curiosity cabinets—inspiring awe and fascination in viewers, while also
reinforcing a pervasive worldview that erased other cultural and natural histories.
Display cabinet (Kabinettschrank) from Augsburg, Germany, c. 1630. J. Paul
Getty Museum.

3. Frontispiece of Olaus Worm
Inspired by the curiosity cabinets he saw on a tour of Europe
in 1605, Danish physician and professor Ole Worm began
collecting objects of naturalia in his own Museum
Wormianum. This frontispiece illustration for the collection
catalogue displays either a representation of the actual
museum, or a metaphorical summation of its contents.
Unlike the cabinets of Italian and Austrian royalty, which
were accessible only to nobility, Worm invited students into
his Museum Wormianum, where they could handle the
objects and learn observational methods of scientific inquiry.
Through this process of knowledge-gathering, Worm in
many ways better understood the objects in his collection
than most of his contemporaries. But the catalogue still
reveals certain inaccuracies, like the use of European myth
to explain unknown natural specimens—Worm had labeled
one item in the catalogue, for instance, as a “giant’s skull.”
Frontispiece of Olaus Worm, 1665, Museum Wormianum
sue Historia rerum rariorium.

4. Fall of the Rebel Angels
Brimming with chaos, abundance, and bizarre fantasy, Bruegel’s Fall of the
Rebel Angels is a curiosity cabinet in narrative form. Depicting the first
first confrontation between good and evil from the Book of Revelation, the
image is split between heaven and hell—blue skies and glowing light in the top
register, a dark pit of grotesque demons below. These demons, or fallen angels,
are not only meant to be sinister but also outlandish, assembled out of
recognizable examples of exotic naturalia. In the upper right, a pink inflated
blowfish faces the wrath of an angel. Blowfish occur in the Pacific and Indian
Oceans, and became highly coveted by collectors in the 16th century. Placed
alongside other flying fish in the heavenly sky, Bruegel uses the blowfish to
represent a world upside down, made topsy turvy by evil at work. Similarly, in
the lower right, he cloaks one of his fallen angels in the armor of an armadillo,
reimagined in metal but identical in shape to the species found exclusively in
North and South America. Bruegel effectively melds these foreign animals with
Christian narrative, juxtaposing his conceptualization of “good”—white, pastel,
and robed human angels—with those things the European viewer perceived as
evil and diabolical – spines, exoskeletons, scales, feathers, and other alien
forms from unfamiliar and distant places that are, in turn, reinforced as all the
more strange and exotic.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1562, oil on oak wood. Royal
Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.

5. Blowfish (left), armadillo armor (right). Details from Fall of the Rebel Angels.

6. Clement Kicklinger, lidded cup with ostrich egg, 1570-1575. Ostrich
egg, coral and silver, partially gilded and painted.
A prized marvel of the curiosity cabinet, the ostrich egg was an early modern
emblem of bestiary legend and Christian religious devotion. This gilded cup was
crafted for the Augsburg cabinet of Archduke Ferdinand II, and fuses sculpture,
goldsmithing, and vibrant coral fragments with a polished ostrich egg. A colonial
construction of foreign rarities, this cup plays on the interests, knowledge, and
expectations of the European viewer. In the eyes of one person, the cup may have
been a reminder to observe God diligently. To another, it might have been a
container for myth and magic. Coral was thought to have amuletic powers, and
ostriches were believed to be robust animals—strong enough to digest iron,
represented by the horseshoe in its mouth. This ostrich egg cup, like many other
objects of wonder, recontextualized “exotic” species within a European
worldview, and in turn, played an oft underestimated role in sponsoring political
power and cultural dominance.
Lidded Cup with Ostrich Egg

7. The Rhinoceros
In 1515, an Indian rhinoceros arrived in Lisbon to keen
spectators, eager to see the imposing creature from another
continent. Shipped as a gift from the Sultan of Gujarat to the
ruler of Portugal, the rhinoceros would be memorialized in
Albrecht Dürer’s widely circulated and reproduced woodblock
print. But despite the description on the print’s upper register,
Dürer himself never actually saw the rhinoceros. On its next
journey from Lisbon to Rome, the animal perished in a
shipwreck, and Dürer instead crafted his representation based on
a sketch sent back to Germany by a merchant. Dürer’s print
consequently could be better described as a fantastical
impression of a rhino than an encyclopedic recreation. Yet the
print and its inaccuracies became a standard image for the rhino
in early modern Europe, included in illustrated natural histories
for over two centuries.
Albrecht Durer, 1515, German, woodcut on paper, 21.5 x 30 cm.

8. In 1515, an Indian
Dürer’s version of the rhino features hard plates of armor, scaled legs and feet, a scalloped breastplate, speckled skin, and most peculiarly, an extra horn above its shoulders. His
mistranslation of the rhino reveals one of the crucial tensions in European objects of wonder. Though artists tried to accurately reflect foreign cultures and species, their models were
imperfect—specimens were usually dead and fragmented; images were copied from previous illustrators, who introduced their own errors. Left to fill in the gaps, artists like Dürer inserted
their own interpretations and imaginings. As a result, the rhinoceros and its true character would not be fully understood in Europe until centuries later.
Can you spot Dürer’s mistakes?

9. Giovanni Martini da Udine, botanical
festoons at the Loggia of Cupid &
Psyche (above), Villa Farnesina, 1515-
1517, fresco. Maize detail (right).
Tucked into a framework of botanical festoons, eight groupings of a distinctly
North American crop adorn the ceiling of the Loggia of Cupid & Psyche at the
Villa Farnesina in Rome. Maize was among the first goods to be sent back to
Europe by Christopher Columbus in the late 15 th century, and quickly found its
way into the imaginations of Italian artists. The botanical festoons at the loggia
frame two celebratory scenes from the Cupid and Psyche classical myth. The
maize in these festoons, however, contain peculiar inconsistencies. Some ears
are depicted with strange, wispy extensions, and most lack any type of shank.
Even more unusual, some are comprised of interlocking kernels. It may be that
the artist was drawing from a singular detached ear—and a poorly adapted one.
Despite their anatomical errors, these American crops on the loggia ceiling are
spoils of colonization elevated into the pleasures of the gods. And like the
classical gods, European power is expansive, capturing natural resources from
distant corners of the earth.
Maize at the Villa Farnesina

10. Raphael, Council and Banquet of the Gods, fresco, ceiling of the Loggia of Cupid & Psyche.

11. Follower of Bernard Palissy, Platter, late 16th century, lead-glazed
earthenware.
A plate or a pond? Covered in highly detailed casts of snakes, insects, lizards,
frogs, plants, and flowers, Bernard Palissy’s rustic ceramics transform the
domestic and familiar into microhabitats teeming with life. A French naturalist
and chemist, Palissy made clay casts of live specimens from nearby ponds and
waterways. After sculpting each specimen into a larger composition, the final
piece would be coated in translucent lead glazes that retained even
infinitescimal details, like the veins on leaves. Inspired by prevailing scientific
interests in naturalism, but with a greater interest in the unusual forms from his
own backyard than those discovered oceans away, Palissy’s hallmark was to
repurpose commonplace forms into the peculiar and highly decorative. The
16 th -century European viewer would have understood artifacts and art based
on preestablished categories and classifications. But Palissy creations, which
blur the realms of art and nature much like global objects of wonder, defied and
challenged those categories, fascinating viewers with their complexity and
novelty.
Platter

12. Bernard Palissy, Pilgrim Flask, 1556-1567, lead-glazed earthenware.
Like Palissy’s other rustic ceramics, this pilgrim flask displays his signature
reimagining of familiar objects into constructed containers of natural wonder.
An object with European Christian cultural significance, pilgrim flasks were
used by religious devotees to hold holy oil when traveling to and from holy
sites throughout the Middle Ages. By adorning a pilgrim flask in layers of cast
seashells, plant matter, and a coiled snake, Palissy turns a recognizable
historical object into something newly foreign and exotic. The pilgrim flask is
no longer functional as a religious tool, but instead exists purely for visual
aestheticism and delight. Palissy also draws on timely themes of migration and
scientific exploration through this flask, visually connecting a symbol of human
movement across regions with early modern interests in the natural world.
Pilgrim Flask

13. 1520, lovely cotinga, roseate spoonbill, Altamira oriole, and other
feathers; gold pigments and dyes; cotton, leather, and reeds.
Weltmuseum, Vienna.
Assembled with the vibrant feathers of tropical birds, this shield is one of just four
surviving works of its kind from colonial Mesoamerica. Produced and used widely
by the Nahuas, featherworks have complex individual histories that were largely
erased through their placement and misinterpretation in European collections.
Featherworks were worn by Nahua rulers, nobles, and warriors, and crafted with
striking feathers acquired through trade and tribute payments. They were understood
to display tonalli, an animating force that adhered in humans, animals, and certain
objects, including particular types of feathers categorized as tlazohihhuitl, or living
beings. Tonalli was a central concern of artists who took great care in the handling
of living feathers, which displayed bright colors and high gloss. The coyote shield is
a Nahua feather mosaic that combines living feathers with less colorful, inanimate
ones to create a work that holds and displays its own tonalli. Once placed on a ruler
or warrior, featherworks like this shield amplified the powerful tonalli of their
wearers. Unlike European objects of wonder, which used native species from Pre-
Columbian America to create exotic novelties, indigenous peoples like the Nahuas
incorporated environmental materials as part of important cultural traditions that
existed firmly outside a Eurocentric worldview.
Coyote shield