Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance - A Contribution to the History of Collecting

Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann is Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Author and editor of numerous books, articles, and reviews, he has received honorary doctorates from universities in Brno and Dresden, among other distinctions. He is a fellow of the Swedish, Flemish, and Polish Academies of Sciences and of the American Academies in Rome and Berlin. Jonathan Blower is a translator of German texts on the visual arts.

“This first English translation of Julius von Schlosser’s classic study of the Kunstkammer (1908) is a cause for celebration by anyone interested in the history of collections. Directly or indirectly, his book inspired a legion of studies on early modern art and curiosity cabinets, a subject that continues to captivate our imagination and has shaped the appearance of some museum displays. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s penetrating introduction examines Schlosser, his intellectual contributions as a curator and teacher, his place within Viennese art history around 1900, and his subsequent reputation.”—Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Kay Forsten Chair in European Art, University of Texas, Austin ;;“Schlosser’s book is a classic of art history: still a standard text for all students of the first great age of collecting, but one which, previously unavailable in English, had remained unfamiliar to a wider audience. This translation, whose virtuosity matches that of Schlosser’s original writing, is here combined with a superb appreciation by Kaufmann of the author's life and works. Schlosser used the extraordinary world of the “cabinet of curiosities” to explore not only how and why museums came into being, as repositories of universal learning and global outreach, but also the gestation of distinctly modern notions of “art” and “nature” and of the “artificial” over against the “natural,” concepts that coexisted in multifarious ways in the minds of the collectors he describes.”—R.J.W. Evans, Regius Professor of History emeritus, University of Oxford;;;“This fascinating publication not only illuminates the history of art history through Schlosser's pioneering study from the early twentieth century, but also offers new insight into important dimensions of the culture of turn-of-the-century Vienna in which Schlosser participated as an art historian. Schlosser's study of art collections and curiosity cabinets allows us to understand better the complex cultural relation between late Habsburg art and museum culture and the early modern Habsburg period that is so fundamental for his analysis, especially concerning the collections of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Finally, the whole publication is framed by the exceptionally interesting introduction of the very distinguished Princeton art historian Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, who is well known for his studies of art and culture in the early modern Habsburg monarchy. This book will be of great interest to scholars of art history specializing in art collecting and collections, cabinets of wonders or curiosities, and Habsburg culture."—Larry Wolff, Professor of History, New York University and author of The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon;;“It was an excellent idea to make Schlosser’s classic work—which everyone interested in collections and museums should read—available in English. The translation is enriched by an introduction by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann that situates Schlosser in his milieu, Vienna circa 1900, and brings him back to life.”—Peter Burke, Professor Emeritus of Cultural History, University of Cambridge;;“A half century or so of recent scholarship has brought the extraordinary collections of art amassed by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century noble courts to public view and imagination, with the result that chambers of wonders and curiosity cabinets are nearly household concepts. All such scholarship looks back to, and cites, Julius von Schlosser’s Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance of 1908. Until now, however, the author of this precocious work has remained little known in English. This authoritative and thoughtful English translation by Jonathan Blower with an introduction on Schlosser’s place in the history of art by the polymathic doyen of art history, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, itself forms a milestone in the still-burgeoning scholarly literature on Kunstkammer collections.”—Pamela H. Smith, Seth Low Professor of History, and Director, Center for Science and Society, Columbia University