PROGRAMME

25 March

Kunst- and Wunderkammer workshop with presentations by Sylva Dobalova (Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences); James Clifton (Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and Curator in Renaissance and Baroque Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), and Vera Keller (Norman H. Brown, Jr. Faculty Fellow, University of Oregon).

three ten-minute presentations followed by q&a plus discussion

Portraits of Nature in the Rudolf II Collection in Prague
This brief lecture is derived from the project "Art for Display: Emperor Rudolf II's Painting Collection in the Context of Collecting Practices around 1600', which took place at the IAH CAS in Prague in 2020-2022 and is ongoing. As part of the research, the question was posited whether Rudolf II's scientific interest in understanding the world of natural phenomena was also reflected in his collection of paintings. There were many paintings in his gallery in which more or less aestheticised representations of nature played a prominent role. His Kunstkammer also contained similar representations, however their purpose was rather epistemic. The inventory of the Rudolphine Picture Gallery shows that the paintings were not arranged according to any modern criteria.
Nonetheless, two smaller rooms are an exception, containing mainly portraits of noble ladies, various paintings of natural subjects and also monsters. Although the arrangement in these rooms may at first glance appear to be a random assortment, the lecture will explore whether there is any discernible reason for their selection.
Sylva Dobalová, PhD, is a researcher at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and managing editor of the journal Studia Rudolphina. Her research focuses on Rudolphine art and the Kunstkammer from the point of view of the representation of nature, and she is also interested in the leisure time and gardens of the Habsburgs. She has cooperated with the National Gallery in Prague on several projects, most recently on the exhibition „From Michelangelo to Callot: The Art of Manneristic Printmaking“ (2024). She was one of the editors of the book Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria: A Second-Born Son in Renaissance Europe (VOEAW Vienna, 2021).

“Welcome to the World of glamorous woods!” European Collections of Wood Samples from Wunderkammern to Xylaria
This paper examines the practice and theory of collecting wood samples—both domestic and foreign—in early-modern Europe, considering their varying sources and means of circulation; functions for the collector; places within collections, and modes of display. From Wunderkammern like those of Ole Worm in Copenhagen and Ferdinando Cospi in Bologna, increasingly systematized xylaria (xylothèques, Holzbibliotheken) like those of Carl Schildbach in Kassel and Johann Heinrich Linck the younger in Waldenburg developed in the late 18th century. Around this time, Ludewig Heinrich Schwikkard’s Entwurf zur Anlage einer Holzarten-Sammlung (1800) proposed an ideal xylarium, and the Icones Lignorum (1773ff) of Jan Christiaan Sepp and Martinus Houttuyn provided a virtual collection of hand-coloured engravings.
James Clifton, PhD, has been Director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and Curator in Renaissance and Baroque Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston since 1994. He has published extensively on early-modern European painting, printmaking, and collecting, especially addressing topics in self-representation, religion, and the intersection of art, science, and nature.

Cataloguing the Hybrid Object and the Disarticulation of the Kunst-und Wunderkammer in Johann Danel Major's Museology.
Hybridity characterises Wunderkammer objects. Works of art or of nature evoke wonder by refusing mundane categories and puzzling spectators in glorious convolutions. Johann Daniel Major (1634-1693) sought to found a new science of the museum in the 1670s premised upon identifying the basic constituents of all museum objects. Rather than physically breaking hybrid objects apart, he made his museum catalogue into an epistemic scalpel, identifying junctures that could be pried apart within seemingly uncategorisable monsters. Through the catalogue, alongside other interventions, Major sought to remake the collection of curiosities into an analytical museum."
Professor Vera Keller, Norman H. Brown, Jr. Faculty Fellow at the University of Oregon,  is the author of Knowledge and the Public Interest (2015), Interlopers (2023), and Curating the Enlightenment (2024). Interlopers won the Gordan Prize from the Renaissance Society of America, the Gershoy Award from the American Historical Association, and was shortlisted for the Snow Prize from the North American Conference of British Studies. Her next project, Superability, will offer a disability history of the Renaissance.

29 April

lecture by Alice Fornasiero, UFR Arts, Lettres, Communication,
Université Rennes

Lecture of 40 minutes followed by q&a plus discussion

The Italian ambassadors at the imperial court in Prague: art brokers under the guise of diplomacy

The artistic exchanges between the Italian courts and the Holy Roman Empire had been particularly intense throughout the early modern age. Objects of art, building projects, artists and architects often left Italy to take their way to the imperial court in Prague. Foreign sovereigns knew the passion for art works of Rudolf II and did not hesitate to present precious gifts through their ambassadors in order to obtain the emperor’s consent upon important diplomatic issues. On his part, Rudolf II did not disdain to make insistent requests for art works, which very rarely ended up in a refusal. Among all the courts, the Medici had frequent contacts with Prague. Francesco I de’ Medici had every interest in meeting the emperor’s demands. The title of Grand Duke was at stake, which, in a time of political conspiracies, risked not being confirmed by Rudolf II. The direct contacts between the sovereigns upon those issues were however very rare. The dispatches show that ambassadors and envoys had a crucial role in the dynamics of exchange of art objects and favours. In addition to diplomacy, ambassadors acted as art brokers and procurers of paintings, rare gems, exotic animals and food delicacies. The lecture partly relies on unpublished archival documentation that wants to underline the key role of the Italian ambassadors in building an efficient artistic network between Italy and Prague.

Alice Fornasiero is a teaching and research fellow in Modern Art History at the Faculty of arts, letters and communication at the University of Rennes 2. Between 2018 and 2021 she was the principal investigator of the postdoctoral research project entitled “Collecting in the 17th century Bohemian Kingdom. From Kunstkammer to Picture Gallery,” supported by the Charles University in Prague. She received a PhD degree in Modern Art History from the Catholic Theological Faculty at Charles University in Prague with a thesis on the artistic training of Bohemian painters in Italy and the patronage of the Bohemian aristocracy during the second half of the 17th century. She also holds a Master degree in Modern Art History from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. Her postdoctoral research focused on the role of Italian ambassadors at the imperial court. In 2021, she published a monograph dealing with collecting activity in Bohemia together with Eliška Zlatohlávková and Miroslav Kindl:From Studiolo to Gallery. Spaces for Collections in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown at the Threshold of the Early Modern Era (Prague,
2021). Several of her essays concentrate on the patronage of Rudolf II and the artistic exchange between the Italian courts and Prague, for example Alice Fornasiero, ʻLa stanza affrescata da Bartholomeus Spranger nella Torre Bianca al Castello di Praga. Uno studiolo dell’imperatore Rodolfo IIʼ, in C. Occhipinti (ed.), Leonardo nel Seicento: fortuna del pittore e del trattatista. Atti del convegno (Museo di Roma, 22 novembre 2019), Horti Hesperidum, II, 2019; Alice Fornasiero
and Eliška Zlatohlávková, ʻThe Studiolo of Rudolf II at Prague Castleʼ, in   Journal of the History of Collections, XXXII/2, 2020).