Levinus Vincent, Wondertoneel der Natuur (1715)
30 May
Claudia Swan, Washington University in St. Louis
Lecture followed by discussion
Featherwork in the Kunstkammer
In this presentation of work-in-progress, Claudia Swan will offer observations on the presence and role of featherwork artefacts, feathers, and other ornithological specimens in Kunstkammer collections from the early 16th century through to the early 18th century.
Claudia Swan is the Mark S. Weil Professor of Art History and Archaeology in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, and a scholar of early modern northern European visual culture with a concentration in the Dutch world. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has published articles and book chapters on early modern art, science, and collecting; on the imagination; on Dutch visual culture; and on mediated goods, Dutch trade, and piracy. Recent publications include a special issue of NUNCIUS on early modern geometries; a study of Dutch liefhebberij as a market sensibility, her monograph Rarities of these Lands: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic (Princeton University Press, 2021), and the co-authored Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2021).
25 April
Sarah Wagner, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin; Corinna Gannon, Städel Museum, Frankfurt; Jessica Keating, Carleton College
Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion
The Kunst- und Wunderkammer
Reviving the Berlin Kunstkammer
For three years, researchers from several disciplines studied the Berlin Kunstkammer in a DFG-funded project to find out about how much the collection, housed in the Berlin Palace from 1600 to the end of the nineteenth century, changed over nearly 300 years. The result was a book and a virtual research environment. While the book attempts to examine the biographies of selected objects, a source-based inventory reconstruction was undertaken in the virtual research environment. The talk will briefly present the two results.
Sarah Wagner is an art historian specializing in the cultural technique of collecting, collection documentation and semantic knowledge modelling. She has been working in academic institutions in the fields of exhibition and collection development since 2012. Recently, she published her dissertation on the history and development of the Kunst- und Wunderkammer in the museum. She is in the process of developing digital indexing models for the colonial contexts of the collections at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.
https://www.imhofverlag.de/buecher/the-berlin-kunstkammer/
https://berlinerkunstkammer.de/en
The Kunstkammer of Emperor Rudolf II as a Magical Space: Challenges and Possibilities to Approach a Lost Collection
Research on the Rudolfine Kunstkammer is made complicated by a number of factors. The
collection and the rooms that housed the Kunstkammer are no longer intact. Therefore, one needs to seek innovative approaches to reconstruct the collecting space, its contents and the underlying concept. This talk will look at the Prague Kunstkammer from the perspective of natural magic and alchemy, which Emperor Rudolf II was demonstrably fond of and present possible approaches to collecting items and to the rooms that once stored them. Magical and alchemical source material will be discussed as a possible key to unsolved questions, which might also be transferred to other collections of the time.
Corinna Gannon is an assistant curator at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. From 2018 until 2022 she was research assistant at the department of art history at Goethe University and conducted a project on a portrait collection of Frankfurt physicians. Her monograph Die Porträtsammlung der Dr. Senckenbergischen Stiftung. Frankfurter Medizin- und Kunstgeschichten was published in 2022, while she also worked on her PhD project dedicated to the Rudolfine collection. Last November, she submitted her dissertation
'Efficacious artefacts. Visual strategies of natural magic in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II'.
Artistic Formation in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II
The art collection, or Kunstkammer, of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) was filled with rare, precious and exotic objects, many of which were stored in the drawers of cabinets. Most of the unworked natural objects (naturalia) stored in these drawers—such as minerals, shells, and animal horns—were irregular and indeterminate in shape. These unworked specimens shared characteristics with the carved and mounted naturalia that were housed on tables and open shelves of the Kunstkammer. As such, the specimens stored in drawers were opportunities for imperial artists to determine form and seek out its various uses and meanings. This paper asks: how does our view of the imperial Kunstkammer shift if, in addition to a site of storage and an instrument of organization, we consider the cabinet drawer to be a site for viewing a natural specimen as an art object existing in potentia?
Jessica Keating is Associate Professor of Art History at Carleton College. Her research and teaching addresses the history of art in early modern Europe, focusing particularly on the intertwined histories of collecting; technology; cultural contact and exchange; and empire and sovereignty. Her book, Animating Empire: Automata, the Holy Roman Empire and the Early Modern World (Penn State University Press, 2018) explores the religious and political histories of six clockwork automata that were produced and collected in the Holy Roman Empire during the second half of the sixteenth century. Currently, she is working on the question of how the Kunstkammer of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (r. 1576-1612) represented sovereignty. She is also in the process of completing a short book, Impossible Nature: The World of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
28 March
Éva Bicskei, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
Recorded guided tour, followed by q&a and discussion
In early modern Europe, the first academic institutions dedicated to acquiring a complete
knowledge of the world were founded almost without exception with the patronage of the
monarchy. The fundamental condition necessary for these scholarly societies—or Gelehrtengesellschaft, learned society, or société savant, as they were called at the time—to operate was the creation of a language both usable in the field of science and comprehensible to the general public of the given state. The nineteenth century provided new impetus for the establishment of similar institutions, as during the period of nation building, these (newly-
founded) cultural institutions played a key role in the creation and dissemination of a national
consciousness.
These broader frameworks defined the primary goal of the Hungarian Learned Society, later called the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: the development of a standardized national language also suitable for the practice of the arts and sciences. The institution was founded in 1825 by a group of Hungarian magnates. Nevertheless, beside their yearly private financial donations, many patriots presented and bequeathed full libraries and thousands of valuable
objects, among them scientific instruments and artworks; curiosities and Antiquities, which belong
today to the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, established quite late, in
1994. Thus the Art Collection consists mainly, but not exclusively, of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century portraits of founders, presidents, secretaries and prominent members of the Academy,
and the remnants of several small historical and art collections donated to the institution during its existence. The guided tour reflects the history of the art institutions historically located in the building in the Academy as well; the arduous process of (re)searching the lost art objects of the Academy, as well.
Éva Bicskei (MA in History, PhD in Art History) is senior research fellow at the Institute of Art History at the Research Centre for Humanities. Her research focuses on the social, cultural and institutional history of nineteenth-century art in Hungary in European context. Her publications include a historical monograph on the Hungarian academic painter Bertalan Székely (Budapest, 2010); a monograph on the (scientific) collections of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, 2021); an edited volume on the history of the house of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, 2018); two articles in a peer-reviewed international journal (Social Policy, Oxford; Male Bonds in Nineteeth Century Art, LUP, 2022); and numerous articles and chapters in collective volumes. Éva serves as Curator-in- Chief at the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, conceiving and organising numerous art exhibitions.
28 February
Markéta Ježková, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences
Lecture of ca. 40 minutes followed by discussion
François Perrenot de Granvelle, Count of Cantecroix: A Renaissance Murderer, Thief and Art Lover in the service of Rudolf II
François Perrenot belonged among the renaissance noble bad guys. He was sentenced to death for plotting to murder his wife; nevertheless, he acquired the famous Granvelle collection and sold the essential part of it to Rudolf II. The lecture will focus on his contacts with Rudolf II Habsburg.
Markéta Ježková studied French, Aesthetics and Art History. In 2019, she joined the Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, as a postdoc researcher focusing on art collecting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in circles associated with Rudolf II's court and digital humanities.
https://www.udu.cas.cz/en/lide/mgr-et-mgr-marketa-jezkova-ph-d
24 January
Oleksii Rudenko, Central European University, Vienna; Edina Zsupán, National Széchényi Library, Budapest; Urszula Bończuk-Dawidziuk, Museum of the University of Wrocław
Workshop: Book Collections
Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion
Books in Motion: Libraries and Classical Book Circulation in Early Modern East-Central Europe
This paper investigates the process of composition and changes in professorial and private libraries in three major cultural centres of early modern East-Central Europe - Poland, Ruthenia and Lithuania - in the sixteenth century. By exploring and comparing several known inventories of noble, private and monastic libraries, I elucidate the practices of collecting books and their circulation. I emphasize the interdependence between the access to most recent prints and history-writing and argue that studying the institutional framework of learning and libraries allows us to explain different kinds of history-writing and “national” myths og originf produced in these diverse intellectual environments in the early modern era.
Oleksii Rudenko is a PhD candidate in Comparative History and a Junior Member at the Center for Religious Studies at the Central European University in Vienna, currently volunteering for the Ukrainian army. He is working on his dissertation about the creation of the early modern myths of origins of Lithuania, Poland, as well as Ruthenia and on the effects of these myths on nation-making. His research interests include cultural transfer, cultural history, the history of humour, Renaissance libraries, classical reception and myth-creation in the early modern and modern eras.
King Matthias Corvinus's (1458–1490) Bibliotheca Corvina
The library of King Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490), the Bibliotheca Corvina is one of the most exciting royal book collections of from the age of Humanism and the Renaissance.
Because of the lack of written sources for its history, its study has been a challenge for about 150 years. Relying on new research, I will present in detail upon how the library was established, how its material was collected and what its sources were. Indeed, it has recently been revealed that the collections of educated Hungarian clerics had played a more important role in the development of the Corvina library than previously thought and so did the codices produced by the royal scriptorium in Buda. I will also suggest a new dating for the birth and
development of the Bibliotheca Corvina.
Edina Zsupán is a classicist with a special research interest in the history of humanist literature and ideas, in particular in fifteenth -century renaissance manuscripts related to Hungary (humanist philology, codicology, paleography, book illumination). She is a specialist of the Corvina Library, as well as the manuscripts of János Vitéz and Janus Pannonius. Edina currently works as research fellow and deputy head of department at the Eötvös Loránd Research Network-National Széchényi Library, Fragmenta et Codices Research Group.
The University Printing House in Wrocław 1726-1804 – a new exhibition in the Museum of the University of Wrocław
The university printing house in Wrocław operated from 1726 to 1804 as part of the Jesuit university founded in 1702 by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. Subsequent heads of the printing house were Jesuit professors of the Theology and Philosophy faculties. In the 1730s, the establishment was the largest printing house in the city. It flourished by fulfilling local and foreign commissions and issued prints in five languages: mainly Latin and German,
less often in Polish, and occasionally in French and Italian. Fonts of various typefaces, as well as black and red inks, were used (see image above).
The latest temporary exhibition in the Museum of the University of Wrocław displays prints from the University printing house when it was run by Jesuits in the eighteenth century in Wrocław. The exhibition attempts to show the wide thematic range of texts issued by the printing house, as well as the technical possibilities of typography and the skills of the printers. The exhibition is the result of comprehensive research of the university library holdings and is accompanied by the publication
of a bilingual catalogue (Polish and English).
Urszula Bończuk-Dawidziuk is an art historian and museologist. She studied in Wrocław, Frankfurt (Oder) and Warsaw. She held several important scholarships and is the author and co-author of books and numerous scientific articles. Urszula is a member of the Polish Association of Art Historians, the Association of University Museums in Poland, the Association of Polish Museologists, and the Silesian Historical Commission in Germany. Her research interests focus on the history of art and culture around 1800 and the history of museology in Wrocław.
2022
13 December
guided tour to Wilanow conducted by Anna Ziemlewska, Museum of King's Jan III's Palace at Wilanów
guided tour, followed by q&a and discussion
Pro publico bono – Collections in the Royal Residence at Wilanów
In the early nineteenth century, when there was no independent Polish state or state-run cultural
institutions such as museums and libraries, Stanisław Kostka Potocki - politician, amateur architect, archaeologist and collector created a diverse, eclectic collection (European and Polish paintings, ancient sculpture and vases, art of the Far East, furniture, Meissen porcelain) and made it available to the public in his palace at Wilanów, along with royal apartments and memorabilia of the first owners of the residence: King Jan III and Queen Maria Kazimiera.
Anna Ziemlewska, Phd, historian and museologist, is an employee of the District Museum in Toruń, Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Vienna. In 2017 she started to work at the Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanów; she has been a participant in research projects including: 'Karol Lanckoroński and his legacy in the collection of the Austrian National Library', 'Türkengedächtnis' and 'Monumenta Sobiesciana, the Fate of the Wilanów collection after 1939'.
29 November
Emilia Kłoda, Ossolineum (Wrocław), Prince Lubomirski's Collection
Lecture of ca. 40 minutes followed by discussion
The lecture is dedicated to Prince Henryk Lubomirski's collection that became the bedrock of the first public museum in Polish Lviv (nowadays Ukraine). Henryk Lubomirski (1777-1850) was the member of a rich and influential aristocratic family and he was raised among cosmopolitan art-lovers. His journey through Europe with Izabela Czartoryska and Stanisław Kostka-Potocki is an interesting example of the 18th-century education “on the road”. Henryk Lubomirski was a well-educated gentleman, art collector and political activist. In 1823, he decided to support Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński in the creation of the Polish cultural institution in Lviv. Ossolinski National Institute, together with the Museum Lubomirscianum, became a stronghold of Polish heritage in the times, when Poland as a sovereign state did not yet exist. Which artworks did the Lubomirski donate to the museum? Was the collection public or private? How has it changed through the last two centuries? The difficult history of the museum, its liquidation during WWII, the dispersion of the collection and the long process of its recreation in Wrocław, shows its transformation from a private endeavour to being a crucial part of the national heritage.
Emilia Kłoda is an art historian currently working in the Museum of the Lubomirski Princes at the Ossoliński National Institute in Wrocław. She has contributed to many research projects, e.g.“Virtual Museum of Baroque Ceiling Paintings in Silesia”, “Baroque Painting in Silesia” at the University of Wrocław, and “Scientific infrastructure for art-historical monuments in East Central Europe” at the Herder Institute in Marburg. In 2017, she received her PhD from the University of Wroclaw. Since 2018, she has been the curator of the Old Masters’ Drawings collection and the Paintings collection in the Museum of the Lubomirski Princes. Old Masters’ Drawings, Baroque painting, digital art history and museology are her main fields of interest.
website: https://wroc.academia.edu/EmiliaKłoda
26 July 2022
workshop on zoological collections: Angelica Groom, University of Brighton; Marzia Breda, University of Padua; Arturo Morgado Garcia, Universidad de Cádiz
Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion
Angelica Groom: 'The Medici Menageries: Changing Cultures of Collecting and Display'
The collecting and display of zoological rarities during the early modern era played a significant role in the self-fashioning of the courtly elite, both in Europe and beyond. The Medici family, from the beginning of their reign in 1532 as Dukes of Florence, and from 1569 to 1737 as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, were enthusiastic collectors of rare fauna. This paper will focus on specific zoological spaces/sites that were established by the Medici family during their period of rule, with the aim of tracing shifting priorities both in the cultures of collecting and display of rare, wild and exotic animals.
Angelica Groom is senior lecturer in the School of Art and Media and on the programme of History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. She is the author of a recently published monograph Exotic Animals in the Art and Culture of the Medici Court in Florence (Brill, October 2018), as well as several book chapters relating to art, animals, collecting and natural history.
https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/angelica-groom
Arturo Morgado Garcia, 'The work of Juan Bautista Bru and the Royal Cabinet of Madrid Collection (1784)'
The Royal Cabinet of Natural History in Madrid was one of the main examples of the scientific policy of Charles III of Spain. Its initial content was completed with specimens sent by Spanish colonial authorities, and the main pieces are described in the work written by Juan Bautista Bru, Collection of animals and monsters of the Royal Cabinet of Natural History of Madrid (1784). A few years later, the Cabinet would make its most spectacular contribution, the reconstruction of a megatherium, the first of a fossil in history.
Arturo Morgado-García is Full Professor of Cádiz University (Spain). His research focus is on Spanish social and cultural history, including topics such as clergy, slavery, witchcraft and zoohistory. He is the author of ten books and over one hundred papers, the most recent of which are Una metrópoli esclavista: el Cádiz de la Modernidad, La imagen del mundo animal en la España moderna and Las expediciones científicas en el siglo XVIII (in collaboration).
Marzia Breda: 'The Museum of Zoology, University of Padua'
The original core of the Museum of Zoology is the 1734 donation by Antonio Vallisneri jr. to the University of Padua, of the extensive naturalistic collection of his homonymous father, Antonio Vallisneri sr, professor of Medicine in Padua between 1700 and 1730. This donation granted Antonio jr the first chair of Natural History in our Athenaeum and entrusted him with the care of this extensive collection, then known as “Museo Vallisneriano”. At his death, in 1770, the collection suffered the first of a series of states of abandon, the chair being resumed only in 1806 by Stefano Andrea Renier. During Renier’s direction, many acquisitions, donations and expeditions enriched the collections of the museum of valuable specimens. The following directors gave minor contribution to the zoological collection (with the exception of Tomaso Antonio Catullo), until 1869. In this year, the chair and the collection was divided into two parts: Geology and Mineralogy on one side, Zoology and comparative anatomy to the other, this latter assigned to Giovanni Canestrini who kept the chair up to his death in 1900. Canestrini was a convinced evolutionist and put big effort in reordering and enriching the collection. During the 20th century, the Museum went through a period of decline due to the World Wars up to its total closure at the end of the 70s. At the beginning of our century it was reopened in a interim exhibition and is now part of the Museo della Natura e dell’Uomo (2022).
Marzia Breda is a specialist in large mammals from the Ice Age (the Quaternary) who for several years carried out her research in Italy and abroad (at the Natural History Museum, London), studying many Italian and foreign collections of mammal fossils, with a special interest in deer and rhinos. The main focuses of her research is the reconstruction of the physical appearance of these animals, their diet, their chronological distribution and the interrelationships among fossil and living species within a certain evolutionary group. Over the years, she has lectured at several university courses, spanning from general palaeontology to vertebrate palaeontology, to Ice Age mammals. Marzia currently teaches the course of “Evolution of Quaternary Faunal Complexes” at the University of Ferrara. In the last years she developed an interest in public engagement and experience in cataloguing activities through a research fellowship at the Centre for University Museums (CAM) of the University of Padua, where she now is Curator of the Museum of Zoology.
26 July 2022
Axel Lapp (director civic museums) guided tour through museums in the city of Memmingen
Guided tour of the museum followed by live q & a session
Strigel-Museum and Antoniter-Museum at Antonierhaus focus on very local historical and art historical events, that reverberate through all of Europe and even the world.
Antonierhaus was built in the second half of the 15th century for the local branch of the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony, who had had the rights of patronage at Memmingen’s St. Martin Church since 1214. The four-winged complex included a hospital to look after sufferers of ergotism (‘Saint Anthony's fire’), an effect of long-term alkaloid poisoning through the ingestion of rye and other cereals infected by fungi.
The Strigel-Museum presents works by the artist family Strigel that was active in Memmingen for several generations around the time the Antonierhaus was erected, and their circle. The best known member of the family is Bernhard Strigel (~1460—4.5.1528), a favourite of Emperor Maximilian I, whose works today are held in many major museums. The collection in Memmingen today includes the painting through which the identity of Bernhard Strigel was re-established in 1908 by Wilhelm von Bode, after it had long been forgotten.
Axel Lapp has been the director of Strigel-Museum and Antoniter-Museum at Antonierhaus, as well as of MEWO Kunsthalle, in Memmingen for the past 10 years. He is a curator, writer and publisher with a strong expertise on contemporary art and museology. Axel studied at the Universities of Marburg, Essex and Manchester and held post-doctoral positions at the Universities of Leeds and Sunderland.
21 June 2022
Barbara Murovec (Visiting Scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz):
German, Italian and Slovenian National Heritage – Considered through Collecting of Cultural Objects in 1941/1942 and 1945/1946
Lecture of ca. 40 minutes followed by discussion
The lecture will analyse Slovenian examples of cultural heritage to show the characteristics of dealing with them during and immediately after the Second World War, as well as the practices of collecting and musealisation of objects in the Alpe Adria region. It will address the issue of institutional art history still being trapped in exclusive national narratives and its resulting applications.
How did the search for “national heritage” proceed in the first years of the Second World War and during the time immediately after the war on the territory of present-day Slovenia? Who inventoried cultural objects and for whom? How were new museums and collections created, on what (legal) basis and with “whose” objects? What were the reasons for the transfer of cultural objects? What was safe-guarded, restored, newly acquired or shown in exhibitions during the first years of German and Italian occupation? And how did these processes and phenomena continue, develop or change after the end of the war in Yugoslavia? How was and is national identity of cultural objects determined, and how might art historians think (differently) about their role and the meaning of identity in the context of the history of the discipline and the mission of institutions in the twenty-first century?
Barbara Kristina Murovec, Visiting Scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, studied art history and comparative literature in Ljubljana, Munich, Vienna and Graz. She obtained her PhD in Ljubljana in 2000 and her habilitation in Maribor in 2009, where she taught from 2010 to 2019. From 2005 to 2018, she was director of the France Stele Institute for Art History of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and, from 2010 to 2016, she served as Secretary and Second Vice-President of RIHA (International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art). Most recently Barbara was a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. She coordinated several national and international projects; the monograph of the EU HERA project (2016 to 2020) Transfer of Cultural Objects in the Alpe Adria Region in the 20th Century (TransCultAA) was published by Böhlau in June 2022 (ed. together with Christian Fuhrmeister).
24 May 2022
Kunstkammer Workshop: Issues of Research and Terminology
Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion
Andrea M. Gáldy, LMU
Introduction
Andrea is the founder of CCE. Her interest in the kunstkammer/studiolo is the result of her doctoral research on the collections of Cosimo I de’ Medici in sixteenth-century Florence.
Mark A. Meadow, UCSB
Specifying Knowledge: Quiccheberg on Prudence and Cognition
Mark A. Meadow is a professor of Northern Renaissance Art and the History and Theory of Museums. His research interests include the relationship of art and rhetoric, early-modern ritual and spectacle, and the origins of Kunst- and Wunderkammern and mutable concepts of value in collections and museums.
In his 1565 treatise on Kunst- and Wunderkammern, Samuel Quiccheberg utilizes specific terminology concerning the forms of knowledge produced by the collection. I will discuss two terms in particular – prudentia and cognitio – and their implications for our understanding of these early collections.
Renate Leggatt-Hofer, independent scholar
A New Separate Building to House the Collection in Vienna in 1558. Ferdinand I as Trendsetter?
Renate is an art historian who used to work for the Federal Monuments Authority Austria at the Scientific Inventory Department and as the Head of the Executive Department for Public Relations. She took part in the research project on the Vienna Hofburg organised by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2010-16). Her main research interests include among others early modern art collecting displayed in residential architecture.
In 1558, a new kunstkammer building was erected in Vienna. It was the first known autonomous building in central Europe, exclusively designed to house the imperial collections. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the building was “swallowed” by newly built residential structures. Although there are few remains, its exact position, appearance and building history could be discovered and virtually reconstructed. It is the aim of this paper to discuss the idea of having a separate “museum” in Vienna and what it meant for the set-up of kunstkammern for the Habsburg dynasty and the Wittelsbach dukes Munich.
Eliška Zlatohlávková, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci
Echoes of Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer in Peter Wok’s (1539–1611) Residence in Třeboň (Wittingau) – Spatial Organisation of Art Collections
Eliška is an art historian who has been working on the topic of Rudolfine art since her doctoral research at Charles University. Her present research focus is on collecting in the early modern era, in particular on spaces for the display of art collections in the lands of the Bohemian crown.
During the final years of his life, Petr Wok of Ro moved his residence to Třeboň, where he had a special building constructed by Italian architects and craftsmen to house his library and art collections. The rooms in which the collections were housed are reminiscent of the collection rooms of Rudolf II at Prague Castle.
26 April 2022
Elisabeth Reitter, Ambras Castle, Innsbruck, Austria, guided tour to the Museum of Castle Ambras
Tour of the Ambras Kunstkammer with a special focus on the Estate Inventory of 1596
Given the rather peaceful situation in Tyrol during the second half of the sixteenth century, Archduke Ferdinand II (1529 – 1595) was able to indulge his interests in the arts and sciences. He is known as one of the great renaissance collectors - i.e. the founder of the Ambras Collections. Besides armour and weapons, portraits and books, he also collected copious amounts of objects for his kunst- and wunderkammer. Items made of rock crystal, gold and silver, hand stones, corals, as well as turned artefacts made of wood and ivory and artistic glass objects were housed in the kunstkammer together with exotic and peculiar naturalia. To accommodate his collections, Ferdinand built dedicated rooms - most of which are preserved to this day. Ambras can thus justifiably be described as one of the oldest museums in the world. The 1596 Estate Inventory describes the objects in the collection and provides information on the way in which they were stored and presented. The current museum presentation will be just as much a topic of the presentation as the contemporary description of the collections from the Estate Inventory.
Elisabeth Reitter studied Art History and French in Innsbruck and Padua/Italy. In January 2019, she started as project assistant at Ambras Castle /KHM Vienna on the edition of the 1596 inventory of Archduke Ferdinand's estate . In this inventory, all the objects in Archduke Ferdinand's many properties (Ambras Castle, Innsbruck Castle, Ruhelust, several hunting lodges) were recorded by hand, making it the most important source of the Ambras collections. The inventory transcipt will be turned into a database linked to the existing objects to index the collections of the Tyrolean archduke. The results of this work will be made accessible both digitally and in print.
To find out more, please visit:
https://www.khm.at/erfahren/forschung/forschungsprojekte/historische-projekte/das-nachlassinventar-erzherzog-ferdinands-ii-1529-1595-von-1596-inv-nr-kk-6652/
https://www.uibk.ac.at/dk-austrianstudies/doktorandinnen/reitter.html
22 March 2022
Štěpán Vácha (Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague): Emperor Rudolf II’s Paintings Collection Revisited: New Ideas and Perspectives
Lecture of ca. 40 minutes followed by discussion
Rudolf’s art collections represent an extensive field of research with a wide range of opinions. The current discourse oscillates between the idea of a private museum accessible only to the emperor and court artists and a semi-public collection conceived in the symbolic meaning as the form of sovereign representation. Scholars have mainly paid attention to the kunstkammer, but not as much to the paintings collection (picture gallery). The clues are clear: the collection was already scattered by the middle of the seventeenth century and there is no exact documentation of its original extent and shape. The use of computation methods and intensive team research raised new questions, which had not been asked yet. The lecture not only offers a fresh look at the location and spatial arrangement of the picture gallery but also encourages a rethinking of the relationship between the picture collection and Rudolf’s personality.
Štěpán Vácha, PhD, is a research scholar at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and editor-in-chief of the journal Studia Rudolphina. His primary research interest concerns Rudolfine and Baroque painting in Bohemia. He teaches art history at Charles University in Prague and the Academy of Fine Arts. Since 2020, he has been a principal investigator of the team research project "Art for Display: The paintings collection of Emperor Rudolf II within the context of collecting practices ca. 1600". For more information visit https://www.inventariarudolphina.com.
22 February 2022
Amber Collections Workshop: Ruth Sargent Noyes (National Museum of Denmark), Tomasz Grusiecki (Boise State University), Rachel King (The British Museum, London)
Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion
Ruth Sargent Noyes: Amber materialities of Sanctity between the seventeenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Grand Duchy of Florence
My talk explores an exchange of luxury gifts in the 1670s-80s between Tuscan Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici and scions of the Pacowie clan in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Medici-Pacowie gift exchange climaxed in the translatio (ritual relocation) of relics of two early modern saints between Vilnius and Florence: Polish-Lithuanian prince Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk (1458-84) and Florentine nun Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607). In 1678 a femur bone of Kazimierz journeyed south; in 1683 hair and a tooth of Maria Maddalena traveled north, outfitted with sumptuous reliquary containers. My talk explores how intertwined discursive strands across epistemic fields—including theories of the emotions, hagiography, spiritual exercises, humoral theory, metaphorics and metaphysics of materials, and conceptual geography—converged in the series of reliquaries manufactured in Danzig (Gdańsk) and Florence of amber, ivory, rock crystal, diamonds, and silver to transport, safeguard, and exegete numinous bodily remains. With a particular focus on the discursive materiality of amber, which featured prominently not only in the reliquaries but also across the Medici-Pacowie gift exchange, and constituted an especially sought-after luxury material by the Medici both in its raw natural state and worked by human facture, I explore how the reliquaries’ haptic and thermal material facture not only instantiated a particular mode of sanctity associated with the saints enclosed within, but also indexed the emotional malleability of the pious devotee interacting with the relics, while also reifying period notions regarding cultural differences between southern and north-eastern Europe.
Ruth Sargent Noyes, PhD, is Marie Skłodowska-Curie EU Senior Research Fellow at the National Museum of Denmark (Copenhagen). Her research takes up the intersection of art, religion and science of the Early Modern period in its global context, with special focus on cross-cultural perspectives between Italy and Northern Europe, including Germany, the Low Countries, and the Nordic-Baltic region. A 2014 Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Dr. Noyes currently leads a Marie Skłodowska-Curie EU Project, The art of (re)moving relics and reforming holiness in Europe’s borderlands (TRANSLATIO), from which her talk is taken.
Tomasz Grusiecki: A Material to Think With: Prussian Carved Ambers, Self-Reflexivity, and a New Geography of Art
There is no material linked more closely to early modern Prussia than amber, and both the Hohenzollerns (rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia) and the Vasas (overlords of Royal Prussia) used it extensively as diplomatic gifts, linking this prized material to their territories. Amber was also one of the most enigmatic materials of the period, with its alchemical nature often examined by natural philosophers who sought to determine its origins and physical makeup. Prussian artisans participated in these explorations by foregrounding amber’s metamorphic qualities. Many amber artefacts carved in Königsberg and Danzig self-reflectively depict the transformation of the Heliades (the Sun’s daughters) into poplar trees, an Ovidian trope important for the understanding of amber as a material that was once something else. This article explores how the physical properties of cups, caskets, and altarpieces carved in amber had consequences for how these objects were used and activated as a vehicle of elite sociability. By tapping into natural philosophy treatises, descriptions of places, gift records, and poetry, it proposes that amber’s material rhetoric was twofold: (first) to frame the geographically peripheral Prussia as a centre of cultural activity and material exploration; and (second) to simultaneously encourage the perception of amber-made artefacts as multivalent media capable of evoking multiple geographic locations, thus delving into transcultural implications of amber, a Prussian material that simultaneously publicized and obfuscated its origins.
Tomasz Grusiecki is Assistant Professor of Art History at Boise State University. He specialises in the study of visual and material culture in Poland-Lithuania, 1500-1700, focusing on early modern nationalism, cultural entanglement, and perceptions of selfhood and alterity. He is currently revising his first book, Transcultural Things and the Invention of Tradition in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania, contracted to Manchester University Press.
Rachel King: Making under the Microscope: Signed Ambers and the Stories they Tell
Although many early-modern objects made from Baltic amber – a fossilised resin extruded some 40 million years ago – survive today, they represent a fraction of what once was.
A small number of amber artisans were feted internationally in their own lifetimes. Celebrated craftspeople like Christoph Maucher or Christian Porschinen are not known to have signed their pieces, although pieces by and attributed to them exist. Conversely, a small number of signed works do survive. These are particularly significant, not least because they attest to the names of a small number of artisans.
This contribution will engage with works signed by and linked to craftsperson Jacob Heise, seeing these objects as a portal to a career about which absolutely nothing is known for the records of the Königsberg guild records are no longer extant. How can approaches developed by historians of material culture help us understand who Heise was, where, how and when he trained and worked, who he worked with, and the routes he took to market?
This contribution explores the ways in which engaging closely with surviving objects can raise and answer questions, as well as enrich and be enriched by recent work on the cultural, natural and material history of amber in the early-modern era.
Rachel King, PhD is Curator of Renaissance Europe and the Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum, London. She has previously held curatorial positions at The Burrell Collection, National Museums Scotland, and the Bavarian State Museums and Galleries. Her articles on early-modern amber in Italy and elsewhere have been important in garnering greater scholarly attention for the history of European interest in this material. Rachel’s book Amber. Nature and Culture, a Global History of Amber, is forthcoming with Reaktion Books.
25 January 2022
Baiba Vanaga, Rundāle Palace Museum: Rundāle Palace Museum: The Rebirth of the Ducal Residence
Recorded guided tour to the Rundāle Palace Museum (Latvia) followed by live q&a session
The Russian court architect Francesco Rastrelli designed Rundāle Palace for the Duke of Courland, Ernst Johann Biron. Although the palace was built between 1736 and 1740, the interior decorations were finished later, between 1765 and 1768. Duke Peter, son of Duke Ernst Johann, can be considered a serious art collector and part of his collection was also kept in Rundāle Palace. In 1795, after the annexion of the Duchy of Courland by the Russian Empire, the last Duke Peter left Courland and took the furnishings of his palaces to his properties abroad. The interior objects and works of art accumulated during the nineteenth century by later owners of Rundāle Palace were moved to St. Petersburg before World War I.
The Rundāle Palace Museum was founded in 1964 as a branch of the Bauska Museum of Regional Studies and Art. In 1972, it became an independent museum. At the time when the museum was established the premises of the palace were completely empty. The accommondation of the museum in the former summer residence of the Dukes of Courland determined to a certain degree the nature of its collections. The palace interior arrangement is aimed at reflecting the former functional role of the rooms, echoing the tastes of the former owners and creating the best possible collection of fine and decorative arts. The tour will focus on the museum’s collecting history.
Baiba Vanaga is an art historian and head of the Art Research Department at the Rundāle Palace Museum. She studied art history and theory at the Art Academy of Latvia and museology at the Latvian Academy of Culture. In 2015, she received her doctorate from the Art Academy of Latvia. Her research interests are women artists, historical collections and the artistic life in Latvia from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth centuries.
Baiba has published on women artists in Latvia; two essays on historical collections are forthcoming: "The Art Collection of Duke Peter of Courland" (proceedings of the conference For the Eyes and for the Soul: Private Art Collections in Lithuania, organised by the National Museum of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute; Vilnius) and "Women Artists’ Works in Public Collections in Latvia, 1870–1918’ (Proceedings of the Art Museum of Estonia, issue 11 (16): Women Artists in Baltic and Nordic Museums; Tallinn).
2022
14 December 2021
Julia Rössel (KONDA, Foto Marburg), Spaces of Collecting: From Physical Matter to Digital Object
Lecture of ca. 40 minutes followed by discussion
Prints were always made to circulate through time and space. When they would join a collection they were extracted from the art marked and, so it seems, they would stop their circulation for a while to stay there. They would be glued in albums or fixed within a mount. Within the collection the physical object is relatively fixed in space within the topological structure of a spacial and virtual classification system. What happens next?
By cataloguing objects in museum databases, by reproducing it via digital photography and by publishing text and image information of the object on the museums website or aggregating databases like Europeana the print is also circulating as a digital object.
The lecture asks which paths a print being part of a Museum’s collection took before and takes within the Museums space. I like to describe this journey as a sequence of transformations and translations that changes the object itself in certain ways.
As example, I will follow the path of a print from the prints and drawings collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick.
Julia Rössel completed her studies in art history and book studies the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz by the with a master's thesis on almanacs from Paris publishers during the reign of Louis XIV. Since 2014, she has been working on her doctorate under Salvatore Pisani at Gutenberg-University Mainz on the topic "Change of Media Systems - Graphic Collections and their Digital Translation". In addition to various study visits to the Statens Museum in Copenhagen, the Kunstistorisches Institut in Florence and the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, she worked as an art mediator at the Städelmuseum Frankfurt and the Museum Wiesbaden. She has been working as research assistant in the project Kupferstichkabinett Online of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. Currently she is project coordinator for an interdisciplinary project in the field of digital humanities at Philipps University Marburg.
23 November 2021
University Collections Workshop:
Urszula Bończuk-Dawidziuk (Museum of the University of Wrocław), Fabienne Huguenin (The Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT), Sofia Talas (Museum of the History of Physics at the University of Padua)
Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion
Urszula Bończuk-Dawidziuk
Between Science and Education. Historical Collections at the University on the Example of the University of Wrocław
Collecting at universities has been practiced from the start. Universities needed research and teaching facilities and collected objects that were useful during lectures and classes with students. Today's universities own historical, scientific and didactic collections that reflect the history of the university, its structural and material transformations. This is also the case with the University of Wrocław, which takes care of its historical collections. The exception of the University of Wrocław, however, is that in 1945 it changed its nationality (from German to Polish). Its collections have largely been dispersed, partly also destroyed. Research in this extremely interesting cultural heritage shows that over the centuries, an attempt to balance the scholarly interests of professors managing collections with teaching at the university is evident in university collections.
Urszula Bończuk-Dawidziuk is an art historian and museologist. She studied in Wrocław, Frankfurt (Oder) and Warsaw. She held several important scholarships and is the author and co-author of books and numerous scientific articles. Urszula is a member of the Polish Association of Art Historians, the Association of University Museums in Poland, the Association of Polish Museologists, and the Silesian Historical Commission in Germany. Her research interests focus on the history of art and culture around 1800 and the history of museology in Wrocław.
Fabienne Huguenin
The Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT
The Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT was founded as a central facility of the University of Tübingen in 2006. It functions as an umbrella institution for the approximately 70 university collections. Some of the tasks of the MUT are to organise the scientific collections responsibly, to preserve them for future generations and to make them usable for research, teaching, public education and profiling of the university. The determination of the origin of objects and human remains as well as the evidence of possible contexts of injustice has also been recognised as an important research desideratum. Some examples illustrate the challenges we face.
Fabienne Huguenin studied Art History, Classical Archaeology and Romance Languages in Tübingen and Djon. After completing her doctorate in Art History in 2011, she worked on several digitisation projects at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, most recently as team leader in the project „Deutsches Museum Digital“ for the scientific indexing of the holdings of the object collection, the archive and the library. She was also responsible for acquiring third-party funding in the field of provenance research at the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Her second book, an inventory catalogue of the portrait painting collection of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, received the publication prize of the museum. Since August 2020, Fabienne Huguenin has been a research associate at the Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT. Her areas of focus include collection and provenance research as well as third-party funding acquisition.
Sofia Talas
The new History of Physics Museum in Padua - Exploring the Potentialities of a University Physics Collection
The Museum of the History of Physics holds thousands of scientific instruments that were used for physics research and teaching in Padua from the 18 th century onwards. It was founded in 1995. We have just developed a project to renovate the Museum, with the aim of shedding new light on the potentialities of Padua university physics collection.
The paper will discuss some of the main peculiarities of the new display, which actually brings the public into Padua's Cabinet of Physics to show how physics was taught and studied in Padua from the 18th century onwards. We will see how connections with the global developments of physics, as well as links with other disciplines, such as art and architecture, emerge from Padua collection of scientific instruments. Stories of successes and failures come to light, often connected to the political, social and economic context, and we will see how instruments themselves offer food for thought on current issues in science and society.
Sofia Talas is curator of the Museum of the History of Physics at the University of Padua. Her research focuses on scientific instruments, their history and interpretation. From 2011 to 2017, she was President of Universeum, the European network aiming at the preservation and promotion of academic heritage. Sofia is currently a Board member of the History of Physics Group (European Physical Society) and the Scientific Instrument Commission (International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science).
18 October 2021
Franciszek Skibiński (Gdańsk National Museum) The National Museum in Gdańsk: Collection, War Losses, Research, Guided tour to the National Museum in Gdańsk
Recorded guided tour of the museum followed by live q & a session
The National Museum in Gdańsk was established by the merger of two institutions: the City Museum (est. 1870) and the Museum of Applied Arts (est. 1881). The core collection of Jacob Kabrun (1759–1814) comprises several thousand paintings, drawings and prints by European masters from the end of the fifteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In the first half of the twentieth century the museum further enriched its collection by acquiring works by modern German artists. Since a large part of the original collection was lost in 1945, the National Museum is now rebuilding and developing its collection, while actively researching its history before and after 1945.
The tour will focus on the museum’s history, war losses and acquisitions as well as current research by the curatorial team. It will be hosted by Franciszek Skibiński, PhD, Vice Director of the Museum and Magdalena Mielnik, PhD, head of the Pre-1945 Fine and Applied Arts Department.
Franciszek Skibiński holds a PhD from Utrecht University. He is assistant professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, where he held a position of Vice-dean responsible for scholarly matters and international exchange. Currently, he is Vice Director for scholarly matters at the National Museum in Gdańsk. In his research he explores the phenomenon of artistic exchange in Early Modern Europe, in particular in relation to sculpture and architecture.
Recently, he published a book Willem van den Blocke. A Sculptor from the Low Countries in the Baltic Region (Brepols, 2020). His other publications include "Early Modern Netherlandish Sculptors in Danzig and East-Central Europe. A study in dissemination through interrelation and workshop practice." Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 63 (2013), and "Between Paris, the Low Countries and the Baltic: an episode in the history of artistic exchange in sixteenth-century Europe." In Arts et artistes du Nord a la cour de Francois Ier, eds. Laure Fagnart and Isabelle Lecocq, Paris 2017.
20 July 2021
Lecture of ca. 40 minutes followed by discussion
The lecture will be dedicated to the Kunstkammer of Hans Steininger (1552–1634), a wealthy textile merchant of Augsburg. Although less well-known today, the collection was one of the most prestigious collections of its times in Augsburg and mainly comprised paintings and antique statues. Hans Steininger built his collection in the 1610s and 1620s, but it was sold off by his son not long after Steininger’s death, in the 1640s. The high quality of the collection is proven by the fact that pieces from it were purchased by the greatest collectors of the day including Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, Christina, Queen of Sweden, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici Among the prospective buyers also was Cardinal Jules Mazarin.
The only item of Steininger’s Kunstkammer known so far was a painting cycle on a mythological theme by Paris Bordone which has long been traced back to the Fugger family and which was believed to be acquired by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. Some of these paintings have even been identified in the imperial collections of Vienna and Prague. The lecture will argue that Hans Steininger neither owned the paintings associated with him by researchers nor that he acquired them from the Fugger. Neither were the works of Paris Bordone sold by his heir in Vienna nor were they purchased by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. Rather, the presentation will show how Steininger's painting cycle by Paris Bordone can be reconstructed, which of his works of art were acquired by the imperial family and which painting can actually be traced back to the Fugger family.
Orsolya Bubryák, PhD, is an art historian, senior research fellow at the Institute of Art History, Research Center for the Humanities (former Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Budapest, Hungary. She received her doctorate in art history from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in 2010. Between 2011 and 2013 she was chief curator of the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since 2016 she has been editor-in-chief of the Ars Hungarica, scholarly journal published by the Institute of Art History. She is the author of two books: Family History and its Visual Representation. Collections of the Erdődy Castle in Galgóc (2013) [in Hungarian] and Collecting Clues. In Search of an Art Collector in Seventeenth-Century Vienna (2018) [in English]
22 June 2021
Armoury Workshop with
Maurizio Arfaioli (Medici Archive Project, Florence),
Stefan Krause (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna),
Szabolcs László Kozak (ELTE-MTA, Budapest)
Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion
Maurizio Arfaioli
The Medici Armoury in its European Courtly Context
In 1775, the Lorraine Grand Dukes of Tuscany finally (and regrettably) scattered what was left of the Medici armoury in the Palazzo Ducale (Palazzo Vecchio). It had been equal – and often superior – to any of the other great European dynastic collections of arms and armour. Its formation had however followed a rather unique trajectory. The Medici had become Dukes of Florence as late as in 1532 and as such were a new, late and, in many respects, unwelcome addition to the Italian and European aristocratic system.
As an enclave in a largely republican context, the small and new court of Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574), second duke of Florence and future first Grand Duke of Tuscany, presented itself as more “martial” than most, lacking much of the veneer of ceremony and etiquette that characterised other, well-established Italian princely families. The guardaroba (the office in charge of the ducal household’s moveable goods) handled the flow of weapons and ammunition which sustained the court’s military lifestyle and functions, making of the Palazzo Ducale “slightly less than an arsenal, much more than a personal armoury.” This short presentation will discuss the origins and later development of the Medici armoury.
Maurizio Arfaioli is Senior Research Fellow at the Medici Archive Project (MAP) in Florence, overseeing scholarly research activities involving the Project’s digital platform (BIA). He has published essays and articles on Florentine military history and iconography. In 2019, he curated an exhibition at the Uffizi on the Medici German Guards. Maurizio’s current projects focus on the Florentine military system during the reign of Cosimo I de’ Medici and on the Italian troops in Spanish service in the Low Countries.
Stefan Krause
Heroes and Ancestors – Habsburg Armour Collecting
The Imperial Armoury in Vienna numbers among the best of its kind in the world. It preserves the key parts of the former imperial armoury, i. e. the collection of arms and armour for war, tournament and representation for the personal use of members of the Habsburg family. The two most important sources of the collection are the former imperial armoury in Vienna and the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck.
The origin of the Habsburg armoury in Vienna can be traced back to the early 15 th century, but the core of this collection dates from the Renaissance. As early as the Middle of 16 th century we have the first archival documents proofing historic armour of family members to be kept in the imperial palace for dynastic reasons. The most important Habsburg armoury in Vienna was housed at the so called Stallburg-Wing of the Palace. At first installed for the personal use of the young Emperor Maximilian II it continued to be used as an armoury with museum-like installation well into the 18th century.
Archduke Ferdinand II. of Tyrol is one of the most important collectors of arms and armour of all times. At Ambras, he realised a very early systematic presentation of objects based on a novel museum idea of methodically collecting. The core of his armour collection was the Heroes’ Armoury with armours that had been owned by famous personalities of his and previous times. He wanted his armoury to preserve the memory of their deeds and to emphasize the leading historical role of the Habsburg dynasty.
Stefan Krause is Ronald S. Lauder Director of the Imperial Armoury at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. He studied Art History at the University of Vienna. In 2010, he was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2014, he was Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
His research focuses on arthistorical and cultural aspects of arms and armour, particularly from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. He has published on the decoration of German renaissance armour, armour as fashion, the history of the Habsburg collections and tournament manuscripts. One of his most recent publications is: Fashion in Steel. The Landsknecht Armour of Wilhelm von Rogendorf (Yale University Press 2017).
Szabolcs László Kozak
Arms and Armour at the Royal Court of Hungary in the Late Middle Ages: Collecting, Exchange and Use
In 1408, Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387–1437) moved his court from Visegrád to Buda castle. Entries from the royal account books tell us that the court employed several weaponsmiths. Precious arms were a symbol of high status and nobility; therefore the Hungarian kings tried to impress their illustrious guests with tournaments, processions and military games. Late mediaeval sources indicate the existence of a royal armoury in the royal palace, destroyed in 1686 during the recapture from the Ottomans. From accounts, testaments and reports of envoys we know about the colour schemes in the rooms and can also indentify some of the objects once stored in the castle.
At the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries, Prince Sigismund (then King of Poland) spent a few years in Buda as the guest of his older brother Wladislaus, King of Hungary. His account books provide precise details of the court‘s everyday life, including information on dozens of target shooting games and jousts. The court’s account books also suggest that the tournaments were executed by a handful of professionals during the reign of the Jagellonian dynasty. The kings’ amourers (politors) maintained the equipment for knightly jousts (rennen and stechen).
Szabolcs László Kozak is a mediaevalist historian and PhD student at ELTE University, Budapest and has been working on projects related to mediaeval and renaissance arms and armour at the Hungarian National Museum. In 2020, he started to work at ELKH (ELTE–MTA) as a research assistant.
Szabolcs believes in a comprehensive scientific approach including craftsmen and guilds as well as technical aspects. As part of his ongoing PhD research, he has published on the production of weapons and on civic roles in self-defence and parades, arsenals and military games (shooting games and jousting) in the most important cities of Transylvania during the late middle ages. Arms and armour are therefore regarded as part of the mediaeval culture uniting practice and fashion.
In his recent work, Szabolcs focuses on the late Royal Armoury of Buda.
18 May 2021
Aistė Bimbirytė–Mackevičienė (Kazys Varnelis House-Museum)
Guided tour to the Kazys Varnelis House-Museum
Recorded guided tour to the museum followed by live discussion
The house-museum of the artist and collector Kazys Varnelis (1917–2010) is reminiscent of a residential house. Its small rooms rich in details of early Gothic architecture contain the exhibits of historical prints, maps and Western European sculptures, supplemented by sets of Renaissance and Baroque furniture and abstract paintings by Varnelis.
Harmony based on contrast makes the entire exhibition extraordinary. Accumulated for fifty years and given to Lithuania, Kazys Varnelis’s collection is a significant contribution to the collections of cultural treasures of Lithuania. It enriches the existing collections and introduces new principles of building an exhibition.
Aistė Bimbirytė-Mackevičienė’s main research focus is on the history of collecting in Lithuania and on the traditions of Lithuanian aristocratic culture with its links to Western Europe. In 2019, she gained her PhD from the Lithuanian Institute for Cultural Research with a thesis on “Count Władysław Tyszkiewicz and Western European Fine Arts in Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Collections.” In 2016, she joined the Kazys Varnelis House-Museum (the National Museum of Lithuania), where she has been researching the collection, curating exhibitions and organising conferences. Aiste has published numerous articles and conducts guided tours through the museum. In 2021, she became a lecturer at Vilnius Academy of Arts.
27 April 2021
Lecture of ca. 40 minutes followed by discussion
The lecture will focus on the imperial residence in Vienna, in particular on the purpose-built Habsburg Kunstkammer of 1558. As far as we know, it was the first time a dedicated building was designed to house the imperial collection. Positioned adjacent to the ballhouse in the Untere Lustgarten, it was part of the residential area but separated – an essential innovation –from the official ceremonial apartment within the Alte Burg. The connections between garden (nature), the collection in its separate building and the official ceremonial space will be analysed, as well as the terminology and meaning of “kunstkammer” and “kunsthaus” in the written sources.
What did the idea of having a separate museum in Vienna mean for the set-up of kunstkammern within the Habsburg Empire and across Europe, e.g. in Munich? After Ferdinand’s death in 1564 his son Maximilian II significantly enlarged the Viennese Kunstkammer building. In 1582, under Rudolf II, it was finally connected to the Old Castle by a bridge across the moat.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Vienna Kunstkammer was swallowed by new structures. Nevertheless, its exact position, appearance and building history were recently discovered: Between 2005 and2017, the imperial Hofburg, its building, meaning and functional history from the thirteenth century to the present time was the subject of an interdisciplinary research project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Renate Leggatt-Hofer (until 2015 Holzschuh-Hofer) completed her degree in Art History, Archaeology and Philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1984 with a PhD on ecclesiastical architecture of the sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. After post-doctoral fellowships at The Albertina Museum (Vienna) and at the Austrian Historical Institute (Rome), she participated in numerous research projects, e.g. on the pleasure palace Neugebäude, Vienna, and several exhibitions. From 1994 to 2016, Renate worked for the Federal Monuments Authority Austria (Bundesdenkmalamt) at the Research and Scientific Inventory Department; from 2010 to 2016, she served as the Head of the Executive Department for Public Relations. From 2005 to 2014, she took part in the research project on the Vienna Hofburg organised by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Renate currently works as an independent scholar. Her main research interests include architectural iconology, central European Renaissance architecture, early modern residences, early modern art collecting displayed in residential architecture and the semantic history of Burgundian symbolism.
Inaugural Event, 17 November 2020, 19.00 CET
Workshop: Issues of Provenance – Provenance as Issue