Sometimes I encounter a website that reminds me of a cabinet of curiosity – beautiful, exotic, mysterious, delicious for the eyes. This blog, Res Obscura, is one of these. Even better, it has its own post about actual cabinets of curiosity from the 17th century. These are some of the most visually luxurious images you will ever see….and it’s very interesting to learn the history behind these “Wonder-rooms”. Enjoy.

 

 

Cabinets of Curiosities in Seventeenth Century (Res Obscura)

 

“There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him… There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us.”- Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1642

 

Early modern Europeans envisioned their own bodies as miniature worlds which echoed God’s Creation in every detail. And in the expansionist, acquisitive and globalizing era of the seventeenth century, the wonders of Creation frequently became conflated with the treasures of the tropical world that Europeans were busy exploiting. The physician and mystic philosopher (and favorite author of Virginia Woolf) Sir Thomas Browne opined that we all carry the “prodigies” of Africa within ourselves, while the poet John Donne famously wrote that “both th’ Indias of spice and mine…lie here with me.” The early modern curiosity cabinet (often called Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer, “Wonder-rooms”) stood at the intersection of this dual preoccupation with microcosms and the treasures of Africa and “the Indies.”…

 

For the complete post click here.

 

 

 

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