Early Modern Museums: Iberian Colonizati

The Early Modern origins of the “public” museum have been studied, in the last decades, under the categories of curiosity and wonder. Revising this literature, the seminar intends to introduce the students to a wealth of primary sources, in order to find novel conceptual avenues of research. We will look at the most important illustrated catalogues that were written, painted and often printed between the 16th and 17th centuries: from Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’Historia Naturale, published in Spanish Naples, in 1599 to the beautiful Manoscritti Campori, the Museum Septalianum (1664) and the Galeria (1666) of the museum opened by Mandredo Settala in Spanish Milan, from the Roman museum of Athanasius Kircher, passing through the public museums of Ulisse Aldrovandi and Ferdinando Cospi in Bologna, of Oleus Worm in Copenhagen, to the documentation about the collections of Juan de la Espina in Madrid, of Lastanosa in Huesca, the Kunstkammerns of Sweden, and that Rudolf II's in Prague, among others. While acquiring a panoramic and critical view on a major field, on its sources and studies, the seminar’s participants will be guided by the following topics: 1) the tight relationship between Iberian colonization and collecting, in the selection and circulation of the art pieces and natural species that will enter the space of the museum and its catalogues 2) the intertwining between art pieces and natural species coming from afar with those produced or generated locally; 3) the different actors implicated in the museification (in space and on paper) of the objects and natural species; 4) the aesthetic education implemented by the items’ public display and by their published descriptions.